


In a Straight Line Down

by standinginanicedress



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Human AU, M/M, Post Break-up, Prom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 18:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6715885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standinginanicedress/pseuds/standinginanicedress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So you want to go to Prom with me just so you can get a plastic crown and a fifty dollar gift card to Outback Steakhouse.” </p>
<p>Stiles sets his jaw. He wants to go to prom with Derek because he <em>wants to go to prom with Derek</em>. But, of course, he's stubborn and prideful and can't admit to Derek how it's barely been twelve hours since they officially broke up and he's already barely handling it as it is, so he just raises his chin in the air and says, “yes.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	In a Straight Line Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WeAreTheCyclones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeAreTheCyclones/gifts).



> first off *leans into the mic* this one goes out to a very special lady - we call her Tylorita 
> 
> second off, my school never actually had a prom (I went to Catholic school which is enough said) so I pulled all the prom shit out of my ass and it's probably not how every other school does it, but then every school is different I guess 
> 
> and mind that Arrested Development reference TBH

“ _What_?” 

Derek gets that look on his face he always does whenever he doesn't want to have a conversation with Stiles – only this time, it seems particularly unfair, because he's the one who started it to begin with. “I think we should break up,” he repeats, voice going a little thin. 

Stiles looks at the foam replica of Saturn he has in his hand, his fingers covered in glue and glitter. He's flabbergasted. Flabber-fucking-gasted, and at a complete loss for words. He looks back at Derek, who's sitting there with Pluto and a paint brush at Stiles' kitchen table. “ _What_?” 

“I'm not saying it again,” Derek snaps, like _he's_ annoyed about it. Like _he's_ the one who's mad. Approximately fifteen seconds ago, they were just sitting here doing work on Stiles' science project, drinking Juicy Juice and covering the floor with glitter and ruining the table with acrylic paints. Stiles had said _I think we might need more yellow paint_ and Derek blinked and said _I think we need to break up_. As if the two thoughts were – somehow - related? 

“Where the hell is this coming from?” Stiles demands, brow furrowing. He deposits Saturn blank-side down on the table, tries fruitlessly to scrape his glitter-hands off on his jeans so that he can at least have this conversation without looking like an extra from a Katy Perry music video. 

Derek purses his lips and holds Pluto on a stick awkwardly in his hand, away from his body as the paint dries. “I just think we've – drifted apart, or something.” 

“Apart from _what_?” 

“From – being in a relationship.” 

“ _What_?” 

“Can you stop saying _what_ like that?” Derek snaps, shaking his head and waving Pluto around in the air for a second. It nearly goes catapulting off its stick and Stiles barely even cares, even though they just spent two hours meticulously painting on its fine lines and the thing is worth twenty percent of his final grade. 

“Can you explain yourself a little fucking better?” 

Derek thrusts his free hand out like he can't even find the words, a frustrated twist to his mouth as his eyebrows curl even closer to one another. “I just don't think we get along anymore.” 

“We get along _great_!” Stiles half shouts this, and Derek gives him a look that says _case and point_. Stiles purses his mouth closed and looks away, again trying to scrub the itchy glitter off of his fingers just for something to do that isn't having this fucking conversation. 

Derek and Stiles have been fighting a lot lately, it's true. But Stiles thought it was just like, a hump or something. They've been going at it for two years at this point, and usually by then you've got on lock all the shit that you dislike about the other person, and so, of course, you're going to fight. It's normal. Stiles thought it was normal. Apparently, Derek has a differing opinion about that. 

“I never even thought we'd work out to begin with,” Derek mutters, maybe just to be a fucking asshole or maybe just because he literally _is_ a fucking asshole without even having to try and Stiles has always known that. Even when Derek was being nice to Stiles, he was still a spectacular fucking douchecanoe to everyone else. That should've been a sign, Stiles thinks, looking pointedly away. “We're two completely different people, we don't even like the same shit, we barely have anything to talk about -”

“Then how come we _always_ talk?” Stiles feels like pulling his phone out of his pocket to show Derek their text thread, hundreds of messages long even though Stiles only just cleared it two weeks ago, filled with such gems as the snowman emoji about ten thousand times over and long winded back and forths about which place in town makes the best pizza. He reaches for his pocket for the evidence, and then he remembers the glitter and freezes. He growls in frustration under his breath and makes an abortive gesture with his glitter-hands in the air. 

Derek looks at him, lips mashed hard together, and then says nothing. Stiles thinks it's a check in his own column, like he really thinks he's going to be able to talk Derek out of breaking up with him. Frankly, Stiles thinks this is all a fucking joke, either way. Just another one of their dozens of arguments. 

“I just think we should see other people,” Derek insists, and Stiles finally stops rubbing his hands on his pants. He holds his fingers up, looks at all the orange and red glitter shining in the light hanging above their head, and swallows. “We can still be friends.” 

Stiles and Derek first started going out halfway through Sophomore year, because they somehow wound up thrust into the same Home Economics class. Both of them turned out to be colossal failures at every single thing they were asked to do in that class – Derek burned countless cakes and Stiles nearly set a shirt on fire trying to iron it – and so, naturally, they wound up paired with one another as a teacher's attempt to contain the damage in one corner of the room. 

Derek is right about one thing. If it hadn't been for Home Ec, then it's highly probable they never would have even officially met and been left only to sporadic sightings of one another in the halls. It's stereotypical, but they simply ran in different circles, and still do. Derek takes art for all his extra-curriculars, painted half of the mural on the Southern wall of the cafeteria, and is in all general placement classes, failed out of Chemistry and had to take a summer class to make it up and get the F off his transcript. Stiles, however, half lives inside of the lacrosse team's locker room and has been placed into nearly all AP classes, takes two college classes online to get a head start on his credits. They, literally, never crossed paths before Home Ec. Stiles only knew who he was at the time because that was the year he painted that mural and his signature was painted sloppily down in the corner, right next to the lunch table the lacrosse team has been commandeering since 1952 or some shit like that. 

Probably, Derek only knew who Stiles was because everyone knows who Stiles is. Small town Sheriff's son notoriety, and all. Plus, Stiles is likable and popular, which absolutely cannot be fucking said about Derek Hale. Stiles thinks – maybe, in this moment, he _used to think_ – that Derek is really funny and cool to be around, but he can be a bit prickly to people he doesn't like. Which, perhaps is most people. 

Except, he likes Stiles. 

_Liked_ Stiles. Maybe. 

“We're not gonna be friends,” Stiles hisses at him, finally letting anger take hold over shock and upset. “I don't wanna be your god damn friend.” 

There's a heavy pause, and then Derek huffs out a breath that says _just what I expected from you_ , or something along those lines. “Fine,” Derek shrugs, and picks his paintbrush back up to put some finishing touches on Pluto. “We don't have to be friends, if that's how you feel.” 

Stiles balls his hands into fists on top of his knees. “You're just being an asshole, I don't – you won't _explain_ to me what this is about!” 

Derek stares directly at Pluto and nothing else, his mouth curved down into a deep frown. “I told you, I don't feel the same way about you anymore.” 

This is something that Stiles has always really disliked about Derek, even when he thought they were crazy in love (aka, about three minutes ago). He has this way of acting sometimes, where he's all detached and delivers news clinically like he's a fucking doctor or some shit. When he is not smart enough for that shit, Stiles thinks with just the right amount of pettiness, narrowing his eyes. He thinks he's so fucking deep and serious all the time, and yeah, maybe he really is, as an artistic whatever-the-hell, but it makes Stiles _insane_ when he gets like this. 

Because Stiles is not detached. Stiles could flip over this table right god damn now in a wild fit of emotion, and he _would_ , if only it wasn't covered in his half-finished science project. All of the arguments Stiles and Derek have ever had, it's usually been Stiles going apeshit and punching his fist through the wall, while Derek stands there and calmly says this that and the other thing, which would make Stiles even angrier and then another hole would show up. Lacrosse is an outlet for his anger, or is supposed to be. But Derek just transcends that shit, sometimes. Stiles could lob ten thousand balls out of his net as hard as physically possible, shoulder-check dozens of other kids, and it would _never_ be enough for him to calm down about Derek. 

For the sake of retaining his project, Stiles just grits his teeth and says, “why don't you just fucking get out, then?” 

Derek pauses, and then gestures to all the styrofoam planets across the kitchen table. There's Mars, which came out the best Stiles thinks, and then Earth precisely painted down to the details with Derek's help, the moon, the sun, Jupiter, and finally, Saturn and Pluto. Saturn's rings are sitting unpainted in front of Stiles, waiting patiently, and now they're just pissing Stiles right the hell off. “We're not done yet,” he says, and Stiles just about loses his god damn mind. 

“ _You're_ done,” he says with all the maturity of a six year old, and Derek rolls his eyes. 

“Stiles, come on.” Then, he pauses, looking off to the side and muttering as if he's talking to himself. “I guess I should've waited until we were done with this to bring it up.” 

As if it was just some little conversation he wanted to pencil in and work around his fucking schedule to his convenience. Not like he was ending a nearly two year relationship. 

“Yeah, maybe,” Stiles agrees, slamming his hand on the table. “Seriously, get out of my kitchen and my house. I can't even talk to you right now.” 

“You are not going to be able to finish this on your own,” Derek waves Pluto around a bit more. 

“I can do anything on my own.” 

“ _You're_ going to paint Saturn's rings?” He says this like it's so fucking impossible, like it's the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard, and that just makes Stiles even madder. 

“Like it's hard!” 

Derek looks at him – in his eyes, Stiles can read loud and clear what he's not saying out loud. Which – fine. Stiles has no artistic talent whatsoever and blunders every thing the second he gets his hands on any marker, paint brush, or fucking crayon. Fine. But Derek has a tendency of acting like everything he makes is so incredible and perfect and he's like Vincent Van Gogh or whatever the fuck. Like, it's _Saturn_. Stiles thinks he's can fucking handle it. 

“If you don't stand up,” he says menacingly, pointing a glitter finger right at him, “and get to walking, I swear to God.” 

Derek puts Pluto down and huffs out another sigh, as if he's being inconvenienced. Stiles wants to throw the moon directly at his stupid face. “You're just angry,” he says, and holy shit, Stiles really and truly fucking is. “We'll talk later when you've calmed down.” 

“I'm _calm_ ,” Stiles snaps, and Derek stands up while muttering something under his breath that Stiles can't quite hear. “I mean, why wouldn't I be calm? My boyfriend of two years just broke up with me for no reason out of literal nowhere -”

“I'm leaving,” Derek says with all the air of finality, picking up his backpack from the ground and strapping it over his shoulders. He pauses for a moment, car keys in hand, gazing over the table at all their half finished work. Stiles' project is due tomorrow. There is every chance in the world that he literally won't be able to do this all by himself because he kept putting it off until Derek had time to help, but he's not about to admit that out loud. He's got too much pride for that. “Are you sure you don't want me to -”

“Just get out of here,” Stiles grits, picking Saturn back up and making a big show of working on it, slapping a paintbrush across a blank spot and smearing a gray-yellow blob haphazardly across it. 

Derek blinks, looking like he wants to say something else, and then he just nods, making his way toward the front door. “We'll talk.”

As soon as he's out the door, Stiles takes a second to drop Saturn back down on the table, heedless now to whether or not he's ruining the paint work, and just breathe in and out. The number of times Derek has walked out in similar fashion is astronomical at this point, so much so that you'd think Stiles would be used to it. He's not, though, so he has to sit and stare blankly at his wall feeling horrible and shitty for a solid ten minutes before shakily picking Saturn back up to slowly start work on it again. He's sure Derek will call, or text, or something. It'll be fine. He was just having his fucking art-period or whatever. 

It takes Stiles about four hours longer than it would have if Derek had stuck around to finish his project – and, to put it lightly, it does not look as good as it would have, either. It looks like he did half of it sober and the other half drunk, half the planets all perfectly buffed and painted diagram perfect, while the other half looks like a psychopath took a stab at it with a hacksaw. It comes out correct, at least, and Stiles is still pretty sure he'll get at least an A minus. 

Around eleven o'clock at night, because Derek must have known that's when Stiles would be able to finish the whole thing himself, Stiles' phone buzzes on his bedside table right as he's starting to drift off into sleep. 

Picking it up, he sees a text from Derek glaring at him on his lock screen, and from the first few words, Stiles can tell he's about to read one of Derek's notorious six page long texts that he's sent nearly every other time they've fought. Since they've been having nights like this a lot more often these past few months, Stiles has gotten used to reading Derek's dramatics well into the night; mostly because Stiles always tells Derek to leave, or leave him alone, or get the fuck out of his face, and Derek will do it if only to avoid getting into an actual screaming match (which is always liable to happen.) 

Sighing, Stiles opens the text and blearily starts to read it. 

Before, Stiles had thought that they were just having another fight and that Derek would be apologizing and saying he didn't know what he was thinking or what came over him, and _of course_ they could work it out just like they work every thing else out. 

As Stiles starts to read the text, he starts to think that this isn't at all like their other fights. Not at fucking all. 

Derek, 11:32 PM : I don't know why you think this came completely out of nowhere. We have done nothing but argue with one another for months, so I just don't think we're the same anymore from when we first started going out. You know I don't want to do anything to hurt you, I still love you, but it doesn't feel the same anymore. We're too different and it's just not working out. It would be worse in the long run if we stayed together. I know you're angry at me and I understand, but eventually you'll see that this was the right thing for us to do. Like I said, I still want to be your friend. You have been my best friend for two years, even if we break up, nothing will change that. I'm sorry I did it how I did it, I just had to get it out and you know how I am. Be angry all you want, it's your automatic setting these days, anyway. It's not your fault, okay??? 

Stiles puts his phone down with a soft thump on his mattress. He lets the read receipt speak for him. 

Derek is right. They've been each other's best friend for two years, they've told each other everything, done everything together, been each other's _firsts_ of a lot of things. Stiles is the reason that Derek realized he was gay, for fuck's sake. It's important. They are important, their relationship, everything. Now that the dust has settled from the actual fight, and Stiles can see everything for what it is, he doesn't feel so angry, like Derek assumes he is (his _automatic setting_ , fuck off.) 

On his ceiling, there's a painting on a canvas that Derek had given him for their one year anniversary. He did it in glow in the dark paint, so in the daylight it just looks like a blob of very light yellow-green taped onto his ceiling with no clear artistic vision. Now, in the dark, Stiles can see the shape of the mountains that Stiles and Derek had been looking at the first time that they kissed. 

He stares at it for a long time, angrily swiping his tears away the second they start coming. After he's had his fill of wallowing and sniffling himself to death, he picks his phone up off the mattress, and deletes the thread he has with Derek in his messages. Then, just because he's petty and angry and hurt, he deletes Derek's contact altogether.

****

When his alarm goes off in the morning, he stares at the yellow-green blob some more, frowns, and thinks long and hard about just not getting up. Getting up means having to go to school and see Derek, and see his friends and admit that Derek wants them to break up, and everyone will find out within a matter of hours that Derek and Stiles are _over_ , and then what's he supposed to fucking do? Be humiliated? Get awkward pats on the back from his teammates? It sounds like a literal hell on earth, just an entire shaker of salt being dumped all over his already festering wound – but he doesn't have much of a choice. He has to bring his project in and present it to the class.

Sometimes, Stiles wishes he was a slacker-idiot with no ambition whatsoever. Fuck the fact that he's already gotten into his top three schools and has the acceptance letters hanging on his fridge to prove it. He, for whatever reason, still cannot manage to say _fuck it_ to any single assignment or test or quiz. It's like he can't get rid of his work ethic no matter what he does, not even in the face of something like this. 

So, he gets up. He tries his absolute hardest to get himself into some semblance of order, so he looks like a well put-together, totally-doing-fine, absolutely-no-one-broke-up-with-me-last-night human person. He winds up in dirty clothes, messy pillow-head, with bags under his eyes, but at least he's up and walking around. Maybe Derek won't be at school today, he thinks. 

Maybe he'll feel shitty and terrible, just like Stiles does, and opt out of the entire day to spare himself, like Stiles can't afford. 

“I thought Derek was supposed to help you with this,” his father says fifteen minutes later around an aggravated huff of breath. They're trying to gently load Stiles' project, all the swinging planets hanging in perfect formation, into the back of Stiles' Jeep. And it's not going particularly well – there's barely enough room for anything more than a blanket and the spare tire back there as it is. Derek's car has way more room for this type of shit, chiefly because it's an actual _car_ and not just a hunk of metal that miraculously manages to roll itself around while making alarming crunching noises. And, yes, he _was_ supposed to help Stiles with this. 

Instead of answering, Stiles just averts his eyes and works on lowering the backseat until it lays flat enough to work with. The worst part of breaking up isn't even actually _the break up_ , he thinks bitterly, leaning down to pick up his side of the project while his dad reaches for the other. It's the part where you have to humiliatingly explain to everyone that, yup, after two years, the other person has decided they've had just about enough of your bullshit, and it's all done and over and you're fucking pathetic. 

So, he doesn't do that. He's not ready. It's sad, but part of him (the stupid, idiotic part he's been working on repressing since well before he can remember) still thinks that Derek will change his mind. If he opens up his phone, he'll see the evidence that that's not going to happen in his contacts, where between _Dad_ and _Domino's_ he'll find something suspiciously missing. But then he thinks that maybe, if he doesn't tell anyone, then it isn't real yet. 

At school, Stiles enlists the help of Scott to get his solar system inside and perched on a table in the Earth Science classroom. Scott grumbles about it a bit, because the thing is awkward and hard to carry if not exactly heavy, and he gets Pluto swinging directly in his eyeball every time Stiles moves weird, but after fifteen minutes, they get it safely stashed, and then Scott gives him a look. 

“I thought this is what you had a boyfriend for,” he accuses, and Stiles grabs onto his backpack straps and tries to look nonchalant. He just shrugs, turning on his heel to walk out into the hallway to make his way to his locker. 

Scott pads beside him as they maneuver through the crowd of students, bustling and chittering to one another. “I've got _glitter_ on me,” he says in disgust, swiping at his shirt where – yup – there's enough reddish-orange glitter from Mars on his shirt that he looks a little bit like he just escaped from a craft store. 

“You've gotta make the planets shine,” Stiles tells him with a wink, and Scott nods his head like _yeah, I guess_ , still smacking his chest as he tries to get the glitter off of his clothes. It's no use, of course, and Stiles has got the mound of glitter still leftover in his hair even post-shampoo to prove it. 

At their lockers, Stiles pulls his French book out, and Scott says, “so, have you gotten your tux yet?” 

“What?” Stiles asks, distracted with hiding his face behind his locker door in case Derek is lurking somewhere in the halls. 

“Your _tuxedo_. My mom took me to get fitted for a rental yesterday. I would've asked you to come along, but I thought you'd have been busy with -”

Stiles tunes the rest of that sentence out, blinking into his locker with wide eyes. Because Scott has just reminded Stiles of something very, very important. Something pivitol. A fact that he had managed to overlook and completely forget about in spite of so much else. 

Prom. Their _senior prom_ is next week. 

Stiles slams his locker closed, and clears his throat. “Um -” he starts, and then doesn't follow it up with anything else. He doesn't even know what he's supposed to fucking say. Of course, he was going to go with Derek. Stiles bought the tickets and already has his tuxedo and Derek already has his, and they coordinated their ties. The entire night is already planned down to the details, sharing a limo with Allison and Scott, going to the dance for all of fifteen minutes, drinking at Jackson Whittemore's house, and, most notably, having sex. 

And, now - 

“I already have mine,” Stiles says in a rush, hugging his book close to his chest as if it's a security blanket he needs to get through this conversation. 

“Derek has his?” Scott inquires, raising an eyebrow. Derek is notorious for being a flop about remembering to do shit like that, but Stiles had been on his ass about it because, stupidly enough, the entire thing was important to him. Not even so much about the actual prom aspect, because who gives a shit, but about the _rite of passage_. Feeling like a real senior, and being with his best friends, and having Derek there. He thinks about it often enough that he can't believe he ever let it slip his mind, even with Derek breaking up with him. 

“Yes,” Stiles says. He went out and got it with Derek, and then they got burritos from their favorite food truck and made out in Derek's car even though they both had terrible breath. That was _last week_ , and yeah, they argued about something stupid a day later, but still. It's weird to think that everything is, in the blink of a fucking eye, changing. In the worst possible way. “He's – yeah.”

“Are you doing corsages?” Scott asks, oblivious to the inner turmoil that Stiles is currently going through, fingers digging so deep into the binding of his French book it's a wonder it's not falling apart right there on the spot. “It doesn't really seem like – I mean...I don't know.” 

“We don't – Derek's not really a corsage type,” Stiles says, and then he clears his throat, rubbing a hand down his cheek. He pauses, blinks, and then he says, “I've gotta – I'll see you in homeroom.” 

“In _two minutes_ ,” Scott caws, even as Stiles is already turned around and all but sprinting in the opposite direction from their homeroom down the hall, pushing through other people and ignoring anyone who tries to greet him. He's got a one track mind at the moment, stomping all through the corridors until making the left that puts him down by where Derek's locker sits and waits. He thinks briefly about his hope that Derek wouldn't be here today, and now he's cursing himself for ever fucking wishing for that – not today, not now. He better _god damn_ be here, because to not be here to deal with this bullshit after everything he's already done to Stiles would just be the insult on top of injury. 

Once he's close enough to see that Derek is, indeed, in school, and standing there futzing with his lock while talking to one of his artsy buddies, he grits his teeth. He looks so fucking normal, just standing there like it's any other day, talking to whatshisface who writes poetry for the school newspaper, all dressed the same with his hair done as usual. He doesn't look at all like he broke up with Stiles last night. 

And, Stiles – with his messy science project and dirty clothes from his hamper and ungelled hair dotted with red glitter – he looks like someone broke up with him. At least a little bit. 

He doesn't even bother saying anything. He just grabs Derek by the scruff of his neck, ignores the indignant shout, and starts hauling him bodily over to the janitor's closet across the hall. As he pulls open the door, there are a few jeers from his classmates who must think they're going in there to make out or something even more unspeakable than that. 

Being the only not-straight couple at Beacon Hills High has given them a bit of notoriety, and lots of unwanted attention. Everyone either goes above and beyond, out of their way to prove how _totally cool_ with it they are and how _lame_ homophobia is, or they get spazzy and uncomfortable from trying too hard to act like it's normal. It's better than actual violent homophobia, Stiles guesses, but sometimes he just wishes people would leave them the fuck alone. 

Stiles slams the door behind them, so they're standing in the dark, and then he feels around in the air for the hanging string – he pulls down on it, and then they're staring at each other. 

“Stiles, what's -”

“Have you told anyone we broke up?” Stiles demands, voice cracking just a little bit in his desperation. 

Derek looks at him for a moment, the light sort of strobing him as the bulb swings around in the air, and then he looks away. “It hasn't come up, yet.” 

He gets mad about that for just a second. It _hasn't come up_. As if it's not that important to him, or like it's not as interesting as anything else he has going on. But then, it's not like Stiles has told anyone either, so maybe he doesn't really have a right to be getting angry about it. They stand there and look at each other for a moment longer, and then Stiles opens up his mouth and snaps, “I am _not_ going to prom by myself as the fucking third wheel -”

“ _Prom_?” Derek repeats, eyebrows raising into his hairline. “Is that what this is about?” 

“Yes!” 

“Stiles.” He says this like _come the fuck on, really?_ , and Stiles nods his head yes, again. 

“I'm not going alone. You're not allowed to make me do that.” 

“Not allowed -”

“Derek,” he starts, taking a step closer into Derek's personal space. Derek doesn't step back, too used to having Stiles there and all over him to even notice anything weird about it. “I've told you so many times that I care about prom. You _know_ it's important to me.” 

Derek nods his head, keeping his eyes pointed at a corner of the room. 

“I spent an entire paycheck on the tickets. I spent an entire paycheck on my tuxedo.” 

Derek's jaw works, and then he meets Stiles' eyes. “You can go with someone else, you know. It's not going to – I'll be fine if you go with someone else.” 

Stiles thinks about screaming _I don't want to go with someone else, I want to go with you_ , because that'd be the truth. Honestly, Stiles has fantasized about prom night for so long, with Derek as the star of course, that he can't even fathom going with anyone else. It just doesn't compute in his mind to switch Derek's face out with anyone else's, not even anyone he finds attractive. The bell rings, and Derek makes a move like he's going to walk out of here and get to class, but Stiles staggers a bit to get in between Derek and the door, and Derek pinches the bridge of his nose. “Everyone else already has a date!” 

“Freddie Burns doesn't have a date,” Derek points out, and Stiles' eyes bulge out of his god damn head. Freddie Burns is some spazzoid Junior that came out a few months ago and henceforth has been front page news. Aside from thinking that he's a permanent resident of Geek fucking City, Stiles has never cared much about him before. But out of nowhere, hearing Derek say his name so easily, Stiles _hates_ Freddie fuckin' Burns and wants to set his entire collection of pocket protectors on _fire_. 

He takes another step closer, pointing a finger into Derek's face. “And how do _you know_ Freddie doesn't have a fuckin' date?” 

Derek looks at him. “Because that's what this has all been about, clearly,” he says, sarcasm dripping from every orifice, “me and Freddie, getting together.” 

“Look,” Stiles says, ignoring the goading and switching the subject, “I can't go with anyone else, I can't – it's next week. Everyone knows we're going together, we already have plans with my friends, and, probably, the entire school is planning on electing us King and King of Prom just to prove how okay they are with _the gays_.” It's true. King and Queen nominations haven't been announced yet, and won't be until sometime tomorrow, but Stiles just knows. He will honestly be surprised if they not only don't get nominated, but don't fucking win by a landslide. The liberal youth of America truly is always doing the _most_. 

“So you want to go to Prom with me just so you can get a plastic crown and a fifty dollar gift card to Outback Steakhouse.” 

Stiles sets his jaw. He wants to go to prom with Derek because he _wants to go to prom with Derek_. But, of course, he's stubborn and prideful and can't admit to Derek how it's barely been twelve hours since they officially broke up and he's already barely handling it as it is, so he just raises his chin in the air and says, “yes.” 

Derek gives him another look. “We're not together anymore.” 

“It's barely two weeks. Okay?” Stiles grabs him by the shoulder and shakes him a bit, much to Derek's evident chagrin. “Just two weeks. You haven't told anyone, I haven't told anyone...we can just pretend like we never broke up, for two god damn weeks.” 

“Stiles -”

“And then you can break up with me the day after the dance for all I care. Just...just prom. Okay?” 

For a moment, Derek just purses his lips and looks like he's going to say no. Stiles honestly wouldn't blame him – it's ridiculous, and he knows it is, to pretend like they're still together all in the name of a stupid high school ritual. But then, like Stiles has said, Derek knows it's important to Stiles. Stupid as it seems, Stiles cares about shit like this. He cares about his friends and his memories and having fun and doing ritualistic, stupid shit just because it's _what you do_ when you're a senior in high school. 

And he just couldn't stand it, not for ten seconds, to ruin everything by going with anyone else aside from Derek. It's embarrassing, knowing that Derek is probably already well on his way to moving on, and Stiles is standing here practically begging him to go to fucking prom with him. 

After the silence goes on for an uncomfortable length of time, Derek clears his throat. “Okay,” he says, sounding a little despondent about it. “Okay, fine. I'll go to prom with you like we planned.” 

Stiles is about to open his mouth to start shouting his thanks, relieved out of his mind that at bare minimum he won't have to third wheel on the Scott and Allison show all night, when the door to the janitor's closet opens, spilling the harsh light of day across Derek and Stiles' faces. It's so bright after standing in nothing but the single lightbulb that they both have to squint and hold their hands up over their eyes. 

Silhouetted in the doorway is Stiles' calculus teacher, Mr. Nelson. He looks at them for a long second, shifting his eyes in between them again and again as if he's looking for a condom or a loose dick or something, and then he sighs. “You're tardy,” he opens with, and then continues on to say, “and you're hiding in a closet.” 

“The irony isn't lost on me either,” Stiles intones, and he gets a firm look for that. Mr. Nelson isn't, in the strictest sense, a homophobe, but he _is_ old, and he doesn't know how to deal with the only gay couple in school. 

Instead of gracing that with an answer, he says, “then I guess you won't mind stepping out to take a trip to the office.” 

Stiles and Derek exchange a look, Derek looking placid and Stiles feeling annoyed. Stiles isn't much for getting into big trouble at school, because he's got scholarships and a million other things to think about that are too important for him to be fucking around with. Frankly, before he started dating Derek, he never got into trouble. He did his work and showed up on time and never jumped into janitor's closets.

_After_ he started dating Derek, he started getting into trouble for things like PDA under the bleachers during lunch hour, PDA in the lunchroom, PDA in closets, PDA in the hallways – just, PDA. Generally speaking. Stiles was pitbull determined to make Derek feel comfortable and open about his sexuality, so even if Derek blushed and ducked his head or hid his face in Stiles' neck after the fact, they kept doing it. Like, all the time. And boy, do they ever have the reputation and track record to prove it. 

Once they're seated in front of the Vice Principal's desk in the ugly little corner office with a ficus waving at them in the breeze from the air conditioner, they get a long look from underneath her glasses, and then a prim pursing of the mouth. “This is the fifteenth time you two have been written up for the exact same thing,” she says, no inflection in her voice. 

Stiles nods. “Young love,” he says, and she doesn't look very amused by that at all. 

“Anyone else might look at all these infractions,” she picks up the folder that houses all of that paperwork, every single pink slip that Derek and Stiles have accumulated since they first started going at it Sophomore year, “and think it's about time you two got a detention.” 

Tapping his chin in mock thought, Stiles says, “or, alternatively, they might see all those infractions against two of the only gay kids in school and think, _homophobia_.” 

She looks at him, long and steady, and her mouth subtly twitches. She wants to beat his ass, Stiles just knows, but she simply doesn't have that option. “Kissing on school property is prohibited -”

“I don't remember Jackson Whittemore and Lydia Martin getting sent to the office for making out during co-ed gym.” In front of everyone and their dog, they just started going the hell at it, and literally, no one gave a shit. Maybe because the two most attractive people in school were kissing and what a sight it was, but _still_. 

She lifts her eyes to the ceiling, probably cursing the literal day that Stiles was born, and Stiles smirks. Derek shifts a bit uncomfortably beside him, narrowing his eyes and looking at anything except for Stiles. He's tends to be a bit more uncomfortable with playing these types of headgames, or using homophobia like a card to get out of trouble – mostly because he was a fresh baby gay when the two of them met, and Stiles had already been swindling people for years at that point. But he still thinks it's fucking funny, because it is. 

After another second of silence, she closes the folder and makes a flicking gesture with her wrist. “Just go to class,” she says, adjusting her glasses and shaking her head. “And _next time_ , it's detention.” 

“Sure,” Stiles agrees as he stands up, motioning for Derek to do the same. He does, looking annoyed and embarrassed in equal amounts. “I'm sure you'll manage to un-gay us eventually, Miss -”

“Get out of here,” she snaps, gesturing wildly again. Derek starts to laugh, and then he presses his fist against his lips to hold it in as he turns quickly away and heads for the door, Stiles hot on his trail. 

As soon as they're spilling out into the hallway again, Stiles lets loose a cackle and pats Derek on the shoulder. “It gets easier and easier every time,” he snickers, shaking his head as they walk down the empty halls. “How lucky are we to be alive and gay in California at a time when being called homophobic is something the straights _fear_?” 

Derek laughs and nods his agreement, though there is a light blush around the tips of his ears. “You would think they'd figure out we're messing with them, eventually.” 

“But, alas,” he gestures to them, detention free and walking the halls. 

For a moment they walk along side by side, and Stiles nearly forgets that they're not actually together anymore. He forgets that they were in that closet talking about how they're going to pretend, just for prom, and when he remembers, it sobers him up to a frown, looking down at his shoes as he walks. 

“So,” he starts, voice low. “Yeah – prom. Thanks. You can tell everyone we're all done after that.” 

Derek pulls on the straps of his backpack and nods his head, not meeting Stiles' eyes. They walk along in silence toward where Stiles' homeroom is half done with and waiting for him. Derek knows exactly where it is because he's walked Stiles to this classroom every day this past year, so once they're outside the door, he stops and turns to look right into Stiles' eyes. “It's for the best,” he says, and Stiles hates that. He hates it when people say that. _For the best_ is just another way of saying _so, it's horrible and shitty but maybe in eight months it'll not be so shitty anymore_ , and Stiles can't imagine going eight months without Derek, but of course, he'll have to. 

Who knows? Maybe it'll only take him seven months to get over it. Then, he knows that's wishful thinking.

****

“ _Jackson Whittemore and Lydia Martin_...” the girl on the television screen reads from a card in a peppy voice, while Stiles' AP History teacher stands off to the side with a twist to her mouth that suggests she still can't believe, after twenty years of teaching, that they interrupt class in the middle of the god damn day to announce the nominations for prom King and Queen. Stiles would have to agree – it's always felt a bit like overkill, seeing as how most people except for the ones who want to be nominated even give half a shit.

The class sits, half of them watching with rapt attention and the other half studiously studying their notes and ignoring the screen altogether. Stiles leans back in his seat, balancing a pen in between his fingers, and gives Allison a _look_. 

She returns it with a smile, shrugging. _Maybe_ , it says, but Stiles knows it's _definitely_. There's not a doubt in his god damn mind. 

“ _Matthew Lawrence and Shiela Disler_...”

Stiles jiggles his pen in the air some more, anticipation curling in his gut. In his mind, he can already taste the fucking cheap-ass steak he's going to get with that gift card. Because, of course, since he and Derek are broken up, then Derek doesn't get a piece of it anymore and all the steaks will go directly into Stiles' mouth. Rules is rules. 

“... _and Stiles Stilinski and Derek Hale_.” 

Everyone turns to look at him the second his name comes out of her mouth, the sound of twenty kids all twisting in their desks at once very loud in his ears. For his part, Stiles just smirks and sits up straighter in his seat. God. If he were straight and dating a girl, he never in his life would get nominated for this. Popular as he might be, he's not necessarily a Lydia or a Jackson – frankly, if he were straight, Allison and Scott would be the ones nominated instead of Derek and Stiles. 

But he's not. So he will eat some fucking steak while capitalizing on these kids' desire to prove how _woke_ they all are. 

“Congratulations,” Allison says with a smile, while everyone else just sort of stares at him as if trying to figure out what they're supposed to say in this situation. Someone is itching, just _dying_ , to ask Stiles which one is going to be the Queen and which one is going to be the King, Stiles knows beyond any shadow of a doubt, but they'll keep their fucking mouths shut. 

The last time someone asked Stiles something like that, Stiles punched them in the mouth hard enough that a tooth came out. People sort of got the idea after that.

“I bet you guys will win – everyone likes you two together.” 

Stiles has to hold in the snort. First of all, everyone lowkey fucking hates Derek's guts even if they have to admit he's talented as all hell. When he and Stiles first got together, some of Stiles' friends legitimately tried to get them to break up because Derek was too much of an _asshole_ for Stiles. And, for someone to be _too much of an asshole_ for _Stiles_ – that really said something. Case and point, it's not about how much people love Stiles and Derek together, and certainly not about how much they love Stiles and Derek individually. 

Stiles wonders how much they'd love it if they all knew that the amorphous concept of _StilesandDerek_ is already on the chopping block – a chicken with its head half hacked off and hanging on by a thread. Probably not very much. That's the cool thing about a secret, though, is that nobody ever has to fucking know. 

“Oh, we'll win,” Stiles says, grinning from ear to ear. “You know they can't resist.” 

Allison sort of looks embarrassed, maybe on behalf of her own stupid-idiot classmates, and then she shrugs it off and has to concede to the truth. Across the room, Lydia Martin is sitting ramrod straight in her desk with her lips pursed down firm and hard, like she's barely holding in a scream behind two rows of perfectly white, shiny teeth. 

Her and Stiles have never gotten along very well. She's always been a _decimal point_ either above or below him in the position of Top of the Class, and as such, either a decimal point above or below being valedictorian. There's only a few weeks left until they figure out who's going to be awarded the honor, and frankly, Stiles has fantasies about breaking into his teacher's offices to scribble wrong answers on Lydia's tests. It's getting petty, and from the look on her face right now as she deigns to meet his eyes across the room, Stiles would guess it's only getting fucking pettier. 

She stares at him for a moment, and Stiles swears to God he feels her eyes _burning_ into his face, and can tell exactly what's going through her mind. She's thinking, Jesus Christ, not only is he going to shit over all my god damn hard work, he's going to steal the _title_ of _Prom Queen_ from me, where does the _injustice_ end? Abruptly, she's turning to her friend with a raised eyebrow that says _look what the homosexuals have done to me_ , and Stiles turns to face forward again with a smirk. 

He has no doubt in his mind that Lydia will beat him out for valedictorian – she's ten times crazier than he could ever hope to be and probably has a voodoo doll of him in her bedroom somewhere, so of course. But he'll win the stupider and much more pointless thing, and wave that crown around in her face just for the sake of it.

If she knew that Stiles and Derek were on the outs already, she would probably feel much more satisfied with herself. Or, perhaps more interesting, she might feel sorry for him. That's even worse. 

At lunch time, he spots Derek at his usual table with the rest of his friends, looking particularly put out about it. From a distance and especially if you don't know him, Derek does have a bizarre tendency to look like he's being dragged over hot coals at any given point in time, though Stiles has always found it a little attractive. Like he's so deep and twisted that even his face can't help but let everyone _know_ he is. 

Now, when Stiles sees him, he bites his lip and feels sad. They haven't spoken since Derek left Stiles at homeroom the day before, or even run into each other. Stiles has been pointedly avoiding him, and he wonders if the rest of the student body has taken notice of it. Normally, Derek and Stiles walk each other to class, or lately, get in a semi-public argument in the stairwell, half-shouting at each other over the sound of the ringing bell while getting side-eyed by everyone as they walk past.

All the same, Stiles approaches the table and watches as all four of the kids sitting there swivel their heads in his direction. Derek frowns at him, something weird crossing his face, while the rest of them just look him up and down and probably barely restrain the eyerolls. 

Derek's friends don't hate him, but they haven't exactly been quiet with their feelings that they “don't get it.” They don't get what Derek likes about Stiles, and oh, it's just because he's the only other gay kid in school aside from the spazzoid Freddie, and it's not like it's going to last, and blah, blah, blah. Derek has always told them to shut their _fucking_ mouths, and that would work on Isaac and Boyd to some extent, but Erica would still eye Stiles like some kind of interloper. Just because he can't draw to save his own ass, that means he has no place in the top secret art society or whatever it is they're calling themselves. 

Stiles plops himself down in the empty chair next to Derek, puts his paper bag lunch on the table, and smiles. “You heard the news?” 

Derek bites into a chicken finger, doesn't meet Stiles' eyes. “Which news would that be?” If this is a fucking preview of what Derek _pretending_ to still be dating Stiles is going to look like, Stiles prays to God that everyone in this school really is as stupid as Lydia Martin thinks that they are. 

“King and Queen,” he winks, and Derek pauses mid-chew. Then, he starts up again without any commentary aside from a non-commital shoulder lift. 

“You guys got nominated?” Erica demands, looking between Derek and Stiles again and again, like she's still trying to figure out how gay sex, like, _works_. 

“I thought that was mandatory viewing,” Stiles raises an eyebrow, and Erica gives him a scowl in response. 

“We were out in the parking lot during third period. If that's when it happened.” Jesus Christ. The _parking lot_ is the official hang-out point of all the fucking art nerds, which really just puts things into perspective. Stiles has come out there with Derek before to see what all the fuss is about, and literally, all they do is sit in the flatbed of Boyd's truck, smoke cigarettes, and talk shit about everyone. Stiles has always had a particular ear for gossip so he can't say he minded much, but it was...lame. Derek and his friends are fucking _lame_. 

Stiles looks back to Derek, tuning Erica effectively out as he scans his eyes over the profile of Derek's face – because, no, he still won't directly look at Stiles. “We got nominated,” he repeats, and Derek takes another bite of his food and chews it very deliberately. “I mean, I knew we would but – a _modicum_ of a reaction would be nice, considering how -”

“Oh, Christ, are you two going to fucking _argue_?” Isaac demands, making a face like if that happens, there'll simply be nothing fucking worse for him to endure. “Go over to that empty table and do that – I can't stand it.” 

“We're not _arguing_ ,” Derek snaps at his friend, who just frowns back at him in response and then rolls his eyes up to the ceiling. Finally, he turns to look Stiles in the face, a crease in his brow the only indication that he's not, in the most literal definition, thrilled. “I knew we would, too. It's – cool.” 

Stiles smirks at him. _Cool_ , right. There's just about nothing Derek hates more than being the center of attention, so god only knows what his face will look like when Stiles pulls him up on that stage and puts a plastic crown on his head while a spotlight shines on him. 

“You guys will probably win,” Boyd says this as more of a worthless interjection than anything else, giving Stiles a very long look that Stiles doesn't even bother trying to read. The dude is always looking at people, Stiles most notably, like he can see clean through to their fucking _essence_ or something. “I'll vote for you.” 

“Thanks,” Stiles says at the same time Erica says, “I'm voting for Lydia and Jackson.” 

“Don't be a dick,” Derek huffs, skirting his eyes to Stiles for just the briefest of moments before looking back to Erica. “Stiles wants to win.” 

She crunches on a french fry and then chews, red lips mashed together, but says nothing else. She'll vote for Lydia and Jackson if only to make a fucking point. Whatever point that may be, Stiles can really only guess at. 

Derek looks at Stiles apologetically. “We'll win either way,” he assures, for a moment acting like he would have if they were still really together. Stiles looks away for a moment, down the rows of other kids eating their lunches and screwing around, and then looks back to meet Derek's eyes. 

In a way, they've already lost. Stiles is sad, but he hasn't been afforded any opportunity to act like it, and he's not about to start here and now, in front of three people who wouldn't be at all sympathetic. 

“My friends are probably waiting,” he says, reaching over to pat Derek on the shoulder, because what else is he supposed to do? 

Awkwardly, Derek says, “you could stay and eat with us.” 

Stiles casts his eyes across the table. Erica looks like she'd gladly shove one of her chicken tenders down Stiles' throat, Isaac gives him a glare that says _why, so you two can fucking bicker for the next twenty minutes?_ , and Boyd looks entirely impassive toward the entire thing. “I'll pass,” Stiles says, none too kind, and pats Derek on the shoulder again as he stands up. 

They've eaten lunch together quite a bit over the past two years, switching between Stiles' usual table and Derek's. Over at Stiles' table, with Allison and Scott and the rest of the lacrosse team, Derek usually just wallflowered himself against his own mural and paid attention exclusively to Stiles. Stiles never minded that much, and his friends have always been welcoming and friendly towards Derek even when Derek wasn't the same back to them. Either way, those days appear to be long over. That's just the shitty thing about when things end – you're never really prepared to let go of the way things used to be. 

“I'll see you,” Derek says, again with the awkward and clipped tone, and Stiles smooths his shirt out with his hand just for something to do that isn't crying or throwing his apple against the wall as hard as physically possible. 

When he approaches his own table, Scott scoots over pointedly and pats the spot right in-between himself and Allison, so Stiles plops himself down and opens up his bag lunch. He stares at his peanut butter and jelly, his apple, his cheese and crackers, and picks half-heartedly at the sandwich first. 

“We were just arguing over who to vote for at prom,” Scott says with a wide smile, nudging him in the shoulder hard enough that he nearly collides with Allison beside him. 

Stiles raises an eyebrow, flicking his eyes just briefly over to where Derek's back is turned to him across the room. “As if there's a competition?” 

“You know _I'll_ vote for you and Derek,” Scott says, benign as ever. “Allison is feeling conflicted about Lydia.” 

Stiles turns to her with mock shock and horror, purposefully nudging her this time. She groans, rolling her eyes. “Don't make me _pick sides_.” 

“Don't think of it like you'd be voting for Lydia,” Stiles says with a finger wag, “think of like you'll be voting for Jackson.” 

As predicted, Allison's face sours like she's just shoved a lemon rind into her mouth. “Fair point,” she concedes, meticulously pulling apart sections of her banana with slender fingers. “But, then again, I don't even think my genuine hatred of Jackson can override the girl code.” 

“Forget her,” Scott waves his hand and gives Allison that teasing smirk that, really, only a boyfriend can give a girlfriend and get away with. “Everyone else _except_ Allison will be voting for you, either way. You and Derek are the best together.” 

Again, Stiles' eyes go to Derek's back before he can help it, and he stares. He wishes that he could tell Scott the truth, because Scott would know what to say, not to mention Allison – but he's just too humiliated, still, and for a moment he gets that surge of anger that feels good when compared with the sadness he's been feeling more often than not the past few days. He's angry that Derek won't be clear about what he ever did wrong, and he's angry that he did this weeks before prom, a month before graduation, and he holds onto the feeling for as long as he can. 

Which isn't long. He rips the crust off of his sandwich and furrows his brow, and he wants to just get up and leave. 

“...opposites attract,” Allison interjects, and Scott nods enthusiastically. 

“Art freak and popular cool kid, somehow winding up together.” 

“I thought it's because we were the only two gay kids at school, at the time,” Stiles says in a low voice, thinking for the first time that maybe that's just true, when before it was always a joke. Maybe Derek only ever wanted to be with Stiles because it wasn't like he had any other options, or maybe he just wanted to be sure of his sexuality before taking up with someone that he could actually _like_. 

Maybe having these kinds of thoughts will ultimately drive him fucking insane, but it's too late for that, now.

****

530-232-4775, 9:32 PM : Can we talk?  
Me, 9:34 PM : new phone who dis  
530-232-4775, 9:34 PM : ….you deleted my number.

Uh, _yeah_? Yeah, Stiles fucking did that. It's amazing Derek didn't send the first text as _this is Derek Hale, fuck you, can we talk_? He knows Stiles' proclivity for impulsive decisions better than nearly anyone else on the planet, even better than Scott – because Scott is such a nice person, that Stiles has taken to, on occasion, shielding his true nature from his best friend, even though it's been fifteen years. Really, Stiles could punch Scott repeatedly in the face and Scott would just smile and say something about _duude_. But, Derek should've known beyond any shadow of a doubt that Stiles had already deleted his number. Shit, it's amazing Stiles didn't just block it. 

530-232-4775, 9:35 PM : Program it back in. I thought we were still going to be friends.  
Me, 9:35 PM : who told you that?? 

Stiles watches the three little dots bump along for a solid thirty seconds before flopping his head down on his pillow and rolling his eyes. Derek isn't the type of person who does long winded speeches line by line, like Stiles and nearly everyone else he knows does, and it drives Stiles fucking _insane_. Having to sit here watching those condescending fucking dots for minutes at a time while Derek edits and re-edits himself in a giant paragraph is what dying by starving to death must feel like, Stiles is sure. 

530-232-4775, 9:38 PM : I know you're angry at me and I'm not saying you don't have every right to be, but if we're going to be doing this bullshit together, the least you could do is be somewhat civil to me, you know. I told you I wanted to still be friends, and don't pretend you're vindictive enough to withhold that just to BE vindictive.   
Me, 9:41 PM : I guess I just don't fucking get why you'd wanna still be friends yet not actually be with me  
Me, 9:41 PM : feels stupid   
Me, 9:41 PM : then again it's not like you're telling me the entire reason you wanted to break up in the first place  
Me, 9:41 PM : so.   
530-232-4775, 9:43 PM : Do you want to argue, or can we just talk to each other like normal people?   
Me, 9:45 PM : argue.   
530-232-4775, 9:46 PM : Let's just not fucking talk at all, then   
Me, 9:47 PM : see I thought that's what you wanted   
Me, 9:47 PM : you don't break up with someone because you still want to talk like old chums   
Me, 9:48 PM : you're going to sit here and act like I did something wrong, well if I did, I'd love to hear what it was 

The dots appear again, and Stiles puts his phone down on his chest and waits for it to buzz with his heart pounding in his ears. Maybe Stiles really is vindictive just for the sake of it, but then, maybe he has every right to be. He and Derek were together for too long and they got to know each other too well for Derek to just _get away_ with pulling some shit like this. If they're going to break up, Stiles doesn't give a fuck if Derek is doing Stiles a favor by pretending to still be together so Stiles can get his fucking prom – he'll be fucking petty about it. 

530-232-4775, 9:55 PM : Why do you even want to do this if you can barely talk to me without it being a fucking argument? Why would you even want to go to prom with me after all of this? You really want this stupid night to be all about your ex-boyfriend? Maybe you should just go with Allison and Scott and I'll just stay home. Would that make you feel better?

Stiles' fingers type in _what would make me feel better is if we got back together and went for real like we were supposed to_ , and then he stares at the message for a long time. The blue text bar blinks at him, again and again, as if it's just daring him to press send, be honest, don't fuck around just because you're scared. But Stiles just purses his lips and deletes, wondering if Derek is watching the dots go from there to gone in an instant, wonders if Derek is going to think about what Stiles almost said, but didn't have the guts to go through with. 

_Why don't you tell me the truth about why we broke up??_ Delete. 

_I don't wanna break up I wanna be with you I hate this_ Delete. 

_I wish you'd just tell me what I did wrong so I could fix it, I'll do that, I could fix everything and we could go back to normal._ Delete.

Me, 10:02 PM : well I'm sorry if my god damn emotions about the fact that you ruined everything are just too much for you   
Me, 10:03 PM : you are so much more of a dick than I ever was   
Me, 10:03 PM : funny everyone warned me about that but I never listened   
(Read : 10:04 PM) 

When his phone doesn't buzz for fifteen minutes, Stiles considers it a lost cause. Derek walks away from conversations both in person and via text, via phone, via any other form of communication. It's one of his less endearing personality traits – whenever things gets too much, or too hard, he just bails. It's like he just can't fucking take it, having that much of a heightened emotion, and it's not like Stiles has ever helped things along in that department. He'll go fucking psycho and Derek will leap out a window just to get away from the entire god damn thing. Who knows what Derek initially wanted to talk to Stiles about, anyway. Stiles is a mastermind at derailing entire conversations and sending them into a destructive argument – so maybe Stiles will never know what Derek was going to say to him. 

Stiles checks his phone obsessively for the rest of the night, frowning at his empty lock screen flashing him nothing but the time until midnight, when he finally just sets his phone down for the last time and curls into his bed, staring at his ceiling some more.

He should really take that painting down, he thinks, staring up at the glow in the dark of his bedroom, all by himself. He should _really_ take that painting down.

****

One good thing about the fact that Stiles and Derek have always been opposites is that they can avoid each other super fucking easily in school, when it comes down to it. They share absolutely no classes, no activities – the only thing they have in common is a shared lunch period, but since there's only two options available at their tiny school, it's not that shocking they got shoved into the same one.

In spite of that, they still somehow managed to find a way to spend excessive amounts of time together in school, mostly in between classes at their lockers and walking down the hallway. Stiles used to show up between Derek's advanced art class and his geometry class to lean up against the locker right beside his, making goo-goo eyes at him until Derek would twine their fingers together – then the kid whose locker Stiles was blocking would glare and make a big fuss about PDA and boundaries and this that and the other thing. 

Without doing that, Stiles doesn't know what he's even supposed to do in the ten minute interim between classes. He goes to his locker, switches out his books, and then just stands there while Scott prattles on and on about prom and lacrosse and whatever the hell. It's not that Stiles isn't all _about_ his best friend, because of course he is, but something about having these extra ten minutes with him every hour on the hour, when Stiles would _really_ much rather be in hallway C harassing Derek...it makes him want to tell Scott to shove a twizzler down his throat. 

Scott keeps candy in his locker all year around, somehow staving off the ants, and for a while there was even a jar of peanut butter and a pack of oreos that he used to gorge himself on. It's a wonder he's not six hundred and eleven pounds, by now. 

“...have to wear a purple tie, but I always think purple makes me look like an idiot,” he's saying now, grabbing a peach ring out with a crinkle of plastic and munching on it while Stiles leans against his own closed locker. “It would be idiotic if we didn't _match_ , so I suggested silver instead because I think that goes, and she gave me this look like I just killed her dog.” 

“Just wear the purple,” Stiles says. 

“I look like Willy Wonka,” he insists with a furrowed brow. 

“You're going to wind up in the purple no matter how much you complain about it.” 

“I just think silver is better.”

Stiles rhythmically bangs his forehead on his locker, gritting his teeth.

“What color are you and _Derek_ doing?” He asks, narrowing his eyes at Stiles' dramatics while other kids teem past, oblivious to their conversation and lost in their own. 

Stiles straightens back up and rubs his forehead, sighing through his nose. “Red.” It wasn't like they coordinated their entire outfits down to the last detail – neither Stiles nor Derek has ever been particularly interested in clothing, in spite of what the stereotypes might say – but they both look good in red, so it seemed like the obvious option. 

They picked it out together and all. Stiles scratches at his cheek and looks down at his feet, frowning. 

“You don't seem that happy about it,” Scott points out, a crease in his brow. “Are you and Derek having a fight?” There's a hidden _not that you ever aren't_ somewhere in that tone, Stiles knows, and it's not like Scott is wrong. Hell, it's supposedly why Derek even broke up with him in the first place. “You haven't gone to see him all day.” 

“He can just be such a _dick_ ,” Stiles blurts before he can stop himself, and Scott nods his head in solidarity, even though he has absolutely zero context whatsoever. “He initiates conversations and then just vanishes like a fucking _ghoul_ to shove a paintbrush up his ass so then I never know what he was even talking about.” 

Scott's lips twitch, perhaps about Stiles calling Derek a _fucking ghoul_ (which is sometimes so on the nose, it really can't even be funny) or maybe in response to the paintbrush comment. But, he doesn't say anything, because there's not much that he can say. Stiles has ranted in much the same fashion to Scott about a hundred thousand times before, and there's only so many times Scott can repeat _yeah totally, what a dick, I can't believe that_ before it becomes redundant. 

Stiles sighs, looking away. “I don't know. Whatever.” 

Scott pats his hand on Stiles' shoulder firmly, slamming his locker closed and pushing another peach ring into his mouth. “It'll pass. You guys always fight and then you always make up.” 

_Not this time_ , Stiles thinks bitterly, but he has to smile and nod for Scott's benefit. A part of him nearly can't wait until after prom, when he can burst into Scott's house past midnight and flop onto his best friend's floor and just let it all out instead of leaving it pent up like this to smother him in his sleep. But then, another part of him never wants that to ever have to happen. He wants to put it off, and put it off, so maybe he puts it off for so long that it never happens, and Derek just forgets they ever broke up to begin with. 

Apparently, Scott was not the only one who noticed that Stiles and Derek hadn't been seeing much of each other lately. 

At lunch time, a tray slaps down on the empty spot right next to where Stiles is perched at the lacrosse team's table, and when Stiles looks up, he sees Derek looking at him with a blank stare. He lowers himself onto the bench next to Stiles, leaning his back up against the wall right next to his own signature, and picks up his slice of pizza. 

It's not weird for anyone else there. The rest of the team either barely glances at him or gives him a nod, Allison doesn't even look up from her phone, and Scott keeps talking. It isn't weird, historically, but Stiles feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, like there's a big neon sign flashing over his head that reads _THEY BROKE UP!!!!_ for any and everyone to see and mock and laugh at. 

When he stares quizzically at Derek for too long, Derek swallows his bite of pizza and says, “Erica mentioned we hadn't had time to see each other lately,” in a slow, careful voice. “She said I could come over here, today.” 

More like, she harassed him about why Stiles wasn't around as much to try and sniff out the truth of what's going on – because there's nothing she'd love more than to hear the words _me and Stiles broke up_ come tumbling out of Derek's mouth. And Derek had to dodge his way around it before throwing his hands up and dragging himself and his tray over here to keep up appearances. 

Allison puts her phone down, notices Derek is sitting there across from her, and gives him a weak smile. “Are you excited about prom, Derek?” 

Derek regards her the same way he always has. Allison is a nice person and it's hard not to like her, even if you're a _I hate everyone_ art freak like Derek. So he just sort of gives her a placid look and then shrugs his shoulders. “It's not really my thing,” he glances briefly at Stiles that way he's been doing ever since this whole thing started, “but Stiles is into it.” 

“It won't even be lame,” she insists, twirling spaghetti around her fork. “We're only going to show up for, like, three songs and the King and Queen announcement.” 

“The rest of the night,” Scott interjects from Stiles' other side, leaning over to get closer into the conversation on this side of the table, “will be spent drinking.” 

“Of course,” Derek says. 

Of course. Hopefully, both Stiles and Derek will get drunk enough that they won't start fucking arguing. Unbelievably, alcohol has never made anything worse between Stiles and Derek. Quite the contrary. It makes them like each other about fifty thousand times more, and things get _weird_ sometimes (like making out on Jackson Whittemore's bed, either because they were too drunk to care or just drunk enough to be that petty), but things never necessarily get bad. The night should go by fine – Stiles can only fucking hope. 

Derek is sitting with his back against the wall so his legs are sort of straddling the bench of the table, his knee bumping up against Stiles' thigh as he jiggles his leg up and down. Stiles focuses intently on his ham and cheese, sort of wishing he could find someway to make himself small enough to vanish underneath the bread and hide underneath the ham just so he wouldn't have to deal with this shit. Or at least that some kind of distraction could come along, like someone yelling _fire_ or starting a food fight. Having Derek sitting right there, literally touching him, and having to sit here and act like everything is totally cool and normal when he feels like a fraud and a liar and just pathetic – it's just fucking terrible. 

High school is literally demonic. The after school specials don't tell you about the part where you have to pretend to still have a boyfriend just so senior year isn't _completely_ god damn ruined. 

Blessedly, or perhaps unfortunately depending on how Stiles looks at it, a distraction does as a matter of fact manage to come right before Stiles starts screaming at the top of his lungs. Stiles hears the telltale _click clack_ of what can only be the single person in this school who wears _heels_ to classes about ten seconds before Lydia is standing at the head of the table with her lips curved in a half-smile half-frown hybrid. 

“Hello,” she greets, and Stiles bites very pointedly and loudly into his apple. “What's up?” 

Everyone else offers varying greetings, talking over each other at once in a cacophony, while Stiles and Derek pretty much just sit there. Derek is doing that thing where he half vanishes into the wall from sitting still for too long, and Stiles eats his apple and glares out somewhere past Lydia's head. 

“What are you doing in here?” Allison asks. “Don't you take your lunch off campus?” She does as a matter of fact, and it's always the most blessed forty minutes of Stiles' life to not have to deal with Lydia fucking Martin for one period out of his day. They share all the same AP classes, and she even lurks around on the bleachers during lacrosse practice so there's not even an escape from her then, either. But here she is, now. Ruining Stiles' fucking day. 

Lydia smiles, that half unpleasant politician's wife smile she's cultivated over the years. “I'm here to campaign.” 

That gets Stiles' full attention. He turns and looks directly at her, in all her glory, and notices that she's got a fairly large box of what appears to be baked goods sitting in her arms. She's got cookies and brownies and a handful of cupcakes, smiling all benign like she's fucking Martha Stewart – when Stiles knows better. She couldn't bake a cookie even if the Muffin Man himself was there to help her.

“Campaign?” Stiles repeats, an edge of suspicion in his voice. 

She settles her snake eyes directly on him, and Stiles swears he can hear the fucking Jaws theme song start up the moment they lock eyes. “For prom Queen.” 

Oh, for _Lucifer's fucking sake._

There's a beat of awkward silence across the table – because Lydia is really standing there in front of an entire table of not just Stiles' _friends_ , but his god damn _teammates_ , trying to swindle them into voting for her over Stiles with cookies and brownies. Some of the boys shift a little uncomfortably, shooting Stiles quick glances before staring pointedly down at their spaghetti or bag lunches. When Stiles chances a glance at Derek, he finds him looking spectacularly zoned out like he's not even god damn listening, which is the least surprising thing about all of this. 

“It's not a big deal,” she flips a red curl over her shoulder and smiles some more, wading through the awkward silence easily. “I just thought I'd come around and remind people I'm nominated.” 

As if anyone could ever fucking forget. People have been _remembering_ that Lydia and Jackson are nominated for that shit well before they ever actually _were_ nominated. 

“I brought some snacks,” she goes on, shaking the box of treats very pointedly, so that the scent of sugar and chocolate wafts around the table. “Anyone want some?” 

There are some more very nervous glances in Stiles' direction from the boys, as if some of them are afraid to take a cookie on the simple basis that Stiles will grab it and shove it down their fucking throats if they even make a reach for one. But Stiles just looks away and sips his water, brow furrowing, and says not a god damn word. 

The first person to reach out and take one is Curtis, who's a _fucking fake_ anyway, so Stiles isn't even that bent out of shape about it. But once the first brownie has been picked up, the floodgates have been opened, and the rest of the team more or less leaps into action. The table _skrrss_ over the linoleum floors as seven teenage boys all stand up and lean over at once, pawing their way through the contents of Lydia's box, while Lydia stands there and looks smug as all literal hell. 

She catches Stiles' eye for a moment, raises one eyebrow like _too bad you're not homo enough to bake!!_ , and Stiles swears...to _God_...

When Scott stands up and takes a cupcake, sitting back down next to Stiles without even meeting his eyes or looking in his “best friend's” direction, Stiles just grits his teeth and turns to give Derek a very pointed look. Derek looks back at him, a small smile on his face. Like he thinks it's _fucking funny_. 

“Stiles?” Lydia calls, all fake nice and cheery sweet. “Derek? Do you want anything?” 

Derek, because he, for one, doesn't have a death wish, says, “no thanks.” 

She slides her eyes to Stiles once again, and jiggles the half empty box in his direction with her lips pulled up at the corners. “ _Stiles_?” She drags his name out nice and long, stressing the syllables individually, mocking, and Stiles has this vision of somehow miraculously winning valedictorian over her, imagining waving the certificate in her face, ending his speech with _GET FUCKED, RAGGEDY ANN!!_ in front of the entire graduating class, their parents, the faculty, a few dogs, and _God_. 

“No,” Stiles snaps at her, and she smiles like she couldn't care less either which way. She taps her foot once, scanning her eyes over the table and watching as everyone else aside from Stiles and Derek gorges themselves on her “””””homemade””””” baked goods, before flipping her hair over her shoulder and clacking off. 

The second she's out of earshot, Stiles whips around and takes the pizza right out of Derek's hand, depositing it on his tray. He ignores Derek's _hey!_ , and spits, “how come we're not campaigning?” 

Derek looks at him, his eyebrows twitching, literally fucking _twitching_. “Oh, my God.” He says it like he profoundly and deeply suspects that Stiles has gone off the deep end. And, believe this, Stiles can feel himself doing exactly that, can feel himself going psycho, being nutty, but he can't – _help it_. Something about the combination of Derek being here, and prom, and the lies, and Lydia – it all influxes into one to create...this. 

“I'm _serious_ ,” Stiles waves his hand across the table, to where Curtis is shoveling an entire cookie into his mouth, and Derek frowns. “How come you haven't baked a god damn bunt cake, or something?” 

“We were in Home Ec together,” Derek reminds him with a quirked eyebrow. “You know why I haven't baked a god damn bunt cake.” 

Right, Stiles thinks, frowning. Last time Stiles saw Derek trying to bake anything, he had to rip the fire extinguisher off the wall and throw his body on top of the class pet to rescue it from getting caught up in the cross hairs. “I just feel like you're not taking this as seriously as I am.” 

“No one is taking this as seriously as you are,” Derek drawls, and Stiles thinks about shoving that pizza right into his stupid mouth. 

“Are you two going to argue?” Scott asks, and Stiles whips around to find his best friend sitting there unpeeling his cupcake, licking frosting off of his fingers. The sight of it makes him go halfway to looney, but he grits his teeth and tries to remind himself that he has _some semblance_ of sanity left. 

“No one's arguing,” Stiles hisses. “I just don't get why you,” he turns back around to Derek and pokes a bony finger into his chest, “don't seem to care much that this matters to me! I want to _win_.”

Derek looks about ready to say _I don't care much at all about any of this_ , his eyebrows coming down the way they always do when he's about to be a fucking dick, but instead he just turns away and frowns very pointedly out at nothing. 

Fine, then, Stiles thinks, taking a huge bite out of his sandwich and chewing it like he's trying to kill it with his teeth. It's not like Derek even really technically owes Stiles anything more than _barely trying_ – they're not even really together anymore, so Derek can do whatever he fucking wants. If they were really together, Stiles would be forcing him to do something absurd, like painting some giant romantic mural of the two of them kissing with a rainbow background and a unicorn galloping past them or some shit. Like he's said, he is not and has never been above playing that homophobia card to get exactly what he wants. He's earned the god damn _right_. 

As it is, Derek is just going to sit there and frown and look annoyed, and Stiles is so angry he nearly can't see straight, so he just tries to think about something else. It's impossible, but he tries. 

Stiles scans his eyes over the lunchroom, more perfunctory than anything else, and he sees Lydia hovering off by the other side of the room toting her box around and acting like a Queen. He glares at the back of her head, feels himself being dramatic and can't even help it – and it officially all comes crashing down when he sees... _Freddie fuckin' Burns_...walk right up to her, and take a god damn brownie. As if it means _nothing_ to him. 

The only other gay kid in the school is going to pander to Lydia Martin like he doesn't have a _civic duty_ to vote for Stiles and Derek on grounds of homosexuality _alone_. It's called _solidarity_. This spineless god damn _rat_ -

Stiles reaches over before he can stop himself, pulls the cupcake right out of Scott's hand – ignores the indignant _hey, Stiles!!_ \- and just crushes the god damn thing in his fingers, balling his hand into a fist and ruining it effectively. The frosting slowly squeezes in between the cracks in his fingers, moist crumbs of the cake go splattering all over the table, the floor, his lap, while Scott sits there, mouth fucking agape, watching his best friend act like a literal psychopath right in front of his face. 

Behind them, Derek goes, “Jesus fucking Christ.” It's what he's always said whenever Stiles has lost his fucking mind. When Stiles got so angry he ripped Derek's paintbrush out of his hand midstroke and started maliciously painting his face with it in lieu of actually smacking him, Derek had said _Jesus fucking Christ_. When Stiles kicked his foot through a wooden fence and got it stuck in there, bleeding and burning in the sun, Derek had said _Jesus fucking Christ_. It's just his reaction, and Stiles has heard it enough times by now that he doesn't even spare Derek a glance. 

There's a beat of silence, Allison sitting across the table looking between all three of them like she doesn't even know where to begin, the rest of the team entirely oblivious and focused on their food. Scott stares at Stiles some more, and Stiles just sort of stares back like a maniac, no discernible expression on his face. 

Then, Scott says, “okay,” standing up from the table, swinging his legs over the bench. “Okay,” he repeats, grabbing Stiles by his shoulders and hauling him up to his feet, cupcake hand and all. “ _Okay_ ,” a third time, and then he's pulling Stiles off toward the double doors and backing his way through them, taking Stiles along for the ride. 

They stagger out into the nearly empty hall together, Stiles huffing and puffing, and then Scott is in his face, pointing a finger right into his eyes. “You,” he begins while Stiles go crosseyed, “are acting weird.” 

“I'm not acting -”

“You have been acting _weird_ for days!” He gestures around wildly, and Stiles looks away with his jaw set hard. “You can't hide shit from me! I know you too well, and I _know_ when something is wrong! And, now, you're just acting flat out psycho!” 

Stiles furrows his brow and takes a step closer to Scott, right in his face. “I'm not acting psycho -”

Without a word, Scott grabs Stiles' wrist and pulls it up, so that Stiles' frosting and cake covered hand is hovering there right in between their faces. Stiles stares at it, lips a hard line, and Scott makes a face like _do you see yourself, now_? 

Scott drops Stiles' wrist and then holds up his pointer finger like he's ticking off a bullet point. “You're going _nuts_ about this King and Queen thing,” he ticks off his middle finger, “you and Derek barely even look at each other,” he ticks off his ring finger, “your science project looked like Bigfoot made it in a cave somewhere,” his pinky, “and you just glared at Freddie Burns like you were going to leap up from the table to rip his arms off and beat him with them.” 

“Freddie is a fucking _rat_ -”

“Freddie cries if you bump into him in the hallway!” 

Stiles averts his eyes again and shakes his head, but he knows it's true. Freddie Burns, though mysteriously now Stiles' number one nemesis and also a spazz, is a very nice, perfectly innocuous person. Even if Stiles might have called him a geek behind his back, because come the fuck on, he'd never dare to say anything to the kid's face. Because, yeah, he _cries_. 

“What's going on?” Scott demands when Stiles is quiet and sullen for a few seconds too long. “Are you and Derek really just having a fight?” 

Focusing on wiping the cupcake bits off on his overshirt, Stiles doesn't meet Scott's eyes. “Me and Derek -” he starts, and then cuts off abruptly, pursing his lips. 

Scott stares for a moment, eyebrows up and waiting expectantly. 

He could tell the truth, Stiles thinks. Honestly, he could just come out with it, and that would explain his bizarre behavior as of late, and he would finally have someone to talk to about this whole shitty, messed up situation. So he could stop doing _insane_ things like trying to fight Lydia Martin over the title of Prom Queen or squeezing cupcakes to death with his bare hands. 

The thing is that he can't. The words just won't come out, stuck like glue in his throat – maybe because he's still denying it even to himself, or maybe because he just doesn't even know how to say it. In a way, it still doesn't quite make sense to him. Stiles and Derek can't really be over, but then, they are. It's giving him whiplash and making him act like this, and he doesn't particularly like acting this way or feeling this way but he just feels... _insane_. He can't help it. 

Instead of any of that, he just quietly says, “yeah, we're in a fight.” 

Scott doesn't say _as usual_ , or roll his eyes, or anything else. He just puts his hand on Stiles' shoulder and squeezes. “It must be a pretty bad one,” he offers, and Stiles can only nod. Oh, it's a bad one. It's a fucking bad one. “Don't worry about it. You two – you fight a lot. It was inevitable. You went too long without having a fight when you first started going out, and now you've gotta make up for all that time. It's, like, a relationship test.” 

“A relationship test,” Stiles repeats. 

“Yeah, a test. It's been two years, you know? By that point you have to dissect all the other person's, like, issues, and then once you make it through all that, it's smooth sailing.” 

Scuffing his feet against the linoleum in the hallway, Stiles asks, “you think me and Derek can pass the test?” 

Scott smiles, and there's no indication in his face or body language that it's a ruse or _just saying what Stiles wants to hear_. Scott is a lot of things, nice and kind and friendly and whatever, but he can't lie to someone just to make them feel better. Frankly, he can't lie at all. So Stiles knows he's telling the truth when he says, “I really do. You two are good for each other.” 

Stiles lets those words sink over him for just a moment, unsure how to react. And then he holds his cupcake hand up in the air and says, “I should take care of this.” 

With a nod of his head, Scott pats Stiles' shoulder and says, “things will get better,” and Stiles nods right back at him, all numb and empty. Scott turns and heads back into the lunchroom, while Stiles starts walking down the hall to the nearest boys' bathroom to work on washing his hand off. 

Stiles guesses that's what this whole thing was about, then. Derek breaking up with Stiles like that, seemingly out of the blue. It's like Scott had said – a test. This point in a relationship is a test, and you either pass it, or you fail it. Stiles has enough evidence in front of him now to see that he's failed, at least where Derek is concerned. 

He looks at himself in the mirror over the sink as he scrapes cake and frosting off of his hands, out from between his fingers and underneath his nails, and then he has to quickly look away. He wonders what it was about himself that was just the _final straw_ for Derek. If it was Stiles' temper, or Stiles' annoying sense of humor, or Stiles' looks, or Stiles' _everything_. 

Once his hands are clean, he turns the faucet off and grips the edge of the sink. What is it that Scott and everyone else sees in Derek and Stiles' relationship that Derek just didn't? Why do so many people think they're some perfect fucking couple, when it clearly couldn't be farther from the truth? And Scott had said that they were good for each other. 

How can they be good for each other, if all they ever did towards the end was just argue?

****

503-232-4775, 7:45 PM : Sorry about lunch today  
Me, 7:47 PM : who is this???  
503-232-4775, 7:48 : Ha. Ha. Ha. Hilarious.  
Me, 7:49 PM : what do you mean you're sorry about lunch???  
503-232-4775, 7:51 PM : Just springing myself on you like that. It obviously pissed you off.  
Me, 7:52 PM : that didn't piss me off tbh  
503-232-4775, 7:54 PM : You crushed a cupcake in your hand.  
Me, 7:55 PM : oh that wasn't about you so much as it was about Lydia  
Me, 7:55 PM : or about a whole bunch of things  
Me, 7:56 PM : but not about you coming over to sit  
503-232-4775, 7:59 PM : Do you want to talk about it?

Stiles stares at that text for a long time, and he knows that Derek is looking at the read receipt and wondering if Stiles is even going to answer it. Stiles will – he just isn't sure how to, yet. The truth is that yes, yes Stiles would love to talk about it. He would love to have an actual conversation, not a fight, with Derek about what went wrong and what happened with them. He would love to come to a final resolution instead of being trapped in this weird limbo period, he would love to really and truly go to prom with Derek and have fun, and most of all, he just wants Derek to act like he used to. 

He wants the two of them _together_ acting like they used to. All of these are things he has too much pride to admit to Derek's face, so he stares at the text good and long, fingers hovering over his keyboard. 

Me, 8:05 PM : just school stuff, it's no big deal   
503-232-4775, 8:07 PM : I meant that we can still be friends. You can talk to me about anything. I'm tired of fighting with you, so we could try. 

Stiles is really sick and tired of Derek saying that. _We can still be friends_. Stiles doesn't want to be friends with him, Jesus Christ, chief of all because he doesn't think he has the emotional capability of doing that with him. It's all or nothing. It's always been, where the two of them are concerned. It's everything, all the fuck in, or it's _nothing_. 

Me, 8:15 PM : I've got Scott for that. I don't want to fight with you anymore either so let's just not talk   
503-232-4775, 8:23 PM : I can't just not talk to you.   
Me, 8:25 PM : don't fuck with me and mixed signals   
Me, 8:25 PM : you seemed perfectly fine to not talk to me when you were breaking up with me  
Me, 8:26 PM : not even trying to start a fight but ???   
Me, 8:26 PM : you can't just pick and choose which parts of me you want to deal with  
503-232-4775, 8:31 PM : I don't know what else you want me to say. I can't be with you, but I can't not be around you. I'm sorry if that pisses you off or upsets you but I'm just being honest.   
Me, 8:32 : maybe we should just distance ourselves, like maybe we shouldn't even go to prom  
503-232-4775, 8:34 PM : You do not mean that   
Me, 8:35 PM : no I don't because obviously we're going but then that's it okay!  
Me, 8:35 PM : I'm not going to be your friend after this!   
Me, 8:36 PM : summer is coming soon anyway and we don't even have to see each other  
503-232-4775, 8:38 PM : You really want to just never see me ever again after school ends?  
Me, 8:40 PM : JESUS MAKE UP YOUR MIND??   
Me, 8:41 PM : one second you want nothing to do with me and then the next you're all BUTTHURT over me saying I don't want to fucking see you!!  
Me, 8:42 PM : just stop texting me!! I'm trying to get over it!!   
(Read, 8:43 PM)

****

503-232-4775, 2:37 AM : I've decided I'm going to San Diego. I figured you should know that.

****

When Stiles wakes up in the morning and reads that text, he has to start forcing himself to remember the odds and probability of a person actually being able to get away with murder. He thinks _I could never carry Derek's dead body anywhere, he weights nine hundred and eleven pounds_ , and then he takes a deep breath, and literally, screams long and loud through his teeth.

This. Isn't. Happening. It just _can't be_. 

He presses the _call_ button before he has a chance to stop himself, and sits up all the way in his bed, glowering with sleepy eyes out at his dirty clothes hamper. 

Derek answers on the third ring, his sleep-heavy voice sounding already resigned to what he has to know is coming. It's why Derek pussied the fuck out and sent that shit at two thirty in the morning, so he could take the time to gather his wits about him and prepare for what he _had to know_ was going to be a fucking screaming match.

“ _You're_ going to San Diego?” Stiles demands, even know he already knows it has to be the truth. Derek wouldn't even fucking dare to joke about something like this. 

Derek sighs. “This is exactly why I didn't want to tell you.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Stiles spits it out like trash, and then he starts – almost maniacally – cackling. “O _ho_. You didn't want to tell me. You _didn't_ wanna tell me. I wonder why that could possibly be! When did you even fucking decide this?” 

There's a pause. A long one. “A couple of days ago.” 

Stiles leaps out of his bed, gangly legs getting tangled in the sheets, nearly brains himself on the floor but gets righted at the last second, and then he begins to pace. Stomp, really. “After we had already broken up!” 

“I didn't factor in -”

“You, after we had _already broken up_ ,” 

“There's not that many other -”

“...decided that you were going to go to _my_ school. The school that _I_ am going to. They sent me a fucking shirt! I have the bumper sticker on my car! The fucking key chain!” 

“Stiles it's really not -”

“What happened to UCLA?” Stiles half shouts this. His father has to be waking up to the sound of this, Stiles just fucking knows it, but he can't force himself to care. Besides, he'll probably just figure it's another StilesandDerek moment and turn over to shove his head underneath his pillow to try and block it out. “What happened to you telling me you were going to LA and me crying about it and you saying _we can do long distance_ , what happened to _that_?” 

There's another pause, and Stiles swears to God if Derek doesn't open his god damn mouth and start explaining this he's going to get in his car and drive over there to strangle the answer right out of him. Talia would love that; Stiles in his pajama pants, no shirt, bed head, bursting in on the family morning breakfast to just immediately start shouting about colleges. “I changed my mind,” he says, voice low. 

“So when we were _actually dating_ , the thought of going to the same school as me was absolutely and completely abhorrent -”

“You are thinking of this so fucking opposite of how I'm thinking of it.” 

“...but now that we're not together, oh sure! Come right along! Maybe we'll be roomies!” 

Derek sighs, and then mutters something under his breath. “The art program is -”

“Are you already, like, _in_ that school? Did you say yes? Are you signed up?” 

Another sigh, and Derek says, “yes, Stiles.” 

“Undo it,” he snaps. 

“You are doing that thing where you fly off the rails and don't think about what you're saying,” Derek says, in that stupid fucking calm-detached voice of his that just makes Stiles want to eat his own fingers off. 

Stiles starts to pace again, free hand on his hip, and he breathes in and out, nice and deep. This just cannot be happening to him. It just can't be. He spent so much of these past couple of months wishing that he and Derek were going to UCSD together, and he was the one who told Derek the art program is _nearly_ as good as UCLA's, and he was the one who said they could stay together, and get an apartment, and all that _shit_ , and Derek never listened when it was Stiles saying it. 

Now that Stiles is done yapping in his ear, all of the sudden he's interested? It just – makes him – so – angry. 

“Then I'll undo it,” he says, and there's a sound on the other line like Derek's just dropped something. 

“Stiles, you're _doing that thing again_.”   
“I don't have to go to San Diego,” he insists, shaking his head. “I got into USC. Maybe I've been -” 

“You're not going to _fucking_ USC,” Derek says, and he actually sounds – angry. Like, really fucking angry, he's nearly yelling it. It's enough that Stiles has to snap his teeth together and go quiet in surprise. Derek doesn't _yell_. “You love San Diego. You wanted to do bio-”

“Maybe I don't want to do that anymore,” Stiles says. “Maybe I'll do – fucking – _psychology_ or some bullshit like that -”

“Yeah,” Derek hisses this, venomous as he's ever been in his life, “you _need_ that, I think.” 

Insulted out of his mind, Stiles mashes his finger down on the _end call_ button and then tosses his phone onto his bed. For a moment he just stands there, fuming, in absolute disbelief that Derek could really be doing this, and then he throws his hands up and heads for the shower. 

Standing under the hot spray of water, he manages to cool himself down, just a little bit. He washes his hair and he thinks that, in all likelihood, driving Stiles insane was not the number one thing on Derek's mind when he changed it at the last second. And San Diego really _does_ have a good art program. It's not like it's some fancy hoidy toidy place like, Jesus, Stiles can't even _name_ a top tier art school off the top of his head, but it's probably the best that Derek could get into. His grades are _just_ good enough outside of art to _barely_ make it into a school like UCLA or UCSD, and probably the only reason he got accepted into either is because of his portfolios. 

Derek is insanely talented, and San Diego is a good art school, as best as Derek can get, and he deserves to go just as much as Stiles does. Stiles knows this. Sometimes he just goes fucking crazy – Derek is well aware of this trait, moreso than almost anyone else. Looking back on it now, he cannot believe he tried to tell Derek to _undo_ enrolling in UCSD, much less that he almost unenrolled himself. 

So when he gets out of the shower, still dripping in a towel, the first thing he does is call Derek right back. 

“You hung up on me,” Derek says after two rings, in lieu of a greeting. 

“You were pissing me off,” Stiles retorts. “But I called to apologize.” 

Derek is quiet, though not necessarily in surprise. Stiles will always apologize if he's really done something wrong, if you give him fifteen or twenty minutes to cool off and think about it. And then he says, “okay.” 

“I never should've -” he sits down on the edge of his bed, rubs his free hand over his forehead and huffs, “of course you should go. That's super great. I'm happy for you.” 

“Thanks.” 

“And you know, that's a pretty big school,” he goes on, staring pointedly down at the towel covering up his thighs. “And you'll be doing art and I'll be doing my shit on the opposite side of campus, so there's every possibility we'll never even run into each other.” It's just that, when Stiles used to try and convince Derek he should come along and be in San Diego with him, he was never thinking about _avoiding_ Derek. Now that he has to think about that, he sort of wants to curl up and cry and never go to college, after all. 

There's a beat of quiet, and then Derek takes a deep breath before he says, “I was thinking more along the lines of it'll be nice to have someone that you know in a school that big and a place that far away.” 

Stiles smiles. It's a rueful, sad, unhappy, bitter smile. “I would say we don't know each other anymore.” 

“That's not true,” Derek immediately says, not even pausing to really think about it. “Look, just because we're not fucking each other anymore doesn't mean that we know nothing about one another. I know you. I _know_ you.” 

“Well, I don't know you,” Stiles feels his throat tightening the way it always does right before he starts crying, but he just powers right on through it, doesn't give a shit if Derek can hear it in his voice as he talks. “You break up with me out of nowhere, you change schools last minute so uncharacteristically, you won't tell me anything, you're _yelling at me_ over the phone. It doesn't sound like you to me.” 

Derek says nothing for a few long seconds, and Stiles thinks he's going to hang up on Stiles now instead of the other way around. But Derek says, “maybe you think that,” all cryptic, like it's a line from one of his bullshit poems, and Stiles rolls his eyes and just – isn't even in the fucking mood for it. 

“Yeah, okay, sure,” he says, shaking his head. “I've gotta go now.” 

Right before he pulls the phone away from his ear, Derek says, “you ready for Monday?”

Stiles blinks out at his empty bedroom. “What's Monday?” 

“The pep rally,” Derek says, grave as if he's talking about the Holocaust, and Stiles thumps his body back down onto his mattress. 

“Oh, fuck.” He had nearly, happily, forgotten about that.

****

The _pep rally_ that happens on the Monday before senior prom every year is mostly something Stiles has learned to tune out. That part of prom is never something he's been particularly interested in, but every year it happens, and usually every year Stiles skips on it in favor of doing something that doesn't _fucking suck_ – but this year, he doesn't have a choice.

He had forgotten that part of being nominated for King and Queen meant that he'd have to actively participate in that pep rally bullshit. It's not that big of a deal, all things said, and if he and Derek were still together it would _really_ not be that big of a deal, because it'd have been fucking hilarious. As it is, it'll probably just be terrible. 

Stiles sits on the bench after lacrosse practice gets out, angrily velcroing and unvelcroing his gloves again and again for no other reason than to have an outlet for his frustration. Behind him, the bleachers are already filling with the rest of the student body, juniors and seniors for the most part, though he sees more than a few freshman looking geeky and awkward hovering around. When he catches sight of Freddie Burns he gives him a long fucking stare, which Freddie more or less just gawks at and then quickly looks away out of what appears to be genuine terror. 

After five more minutes of sitting and listening to everyone else piling up to see the show, Scott plops down next to him on the bench and puts his arm around Stiles' shoulders, sort of shaking him back and forth as if trying to wake him up. “Hey,” he says, and Stiles frowns, “aren't you going to change?” 

Stiles looks down at himself – still sweaty, in his uniform, looking like a general mess. People usually take the time to dress up for this shit, and he knows beyond any shadow of a doubt Lydia and Jackson are going to be done the hell up like movie stars if only for the sake of an opportunity to do so. “Eh,” he says, shrugging. “This'll do.” 

Scott sort of pinches his face together, but doesn't make a comment. 

“Hey, I've gotta tell you something,” Stiles says, thumping his gloved hand against his upper thigh again and again, squinting up into the late afternoon sunlight. 

“What's up?” 

Stiles inhales through his nose and doesn't meet Scott's eyes. He's been trying to wait until the two of them were at least kind of alone to have this conversation, and it looks like this is the best they're going to get – hopefully lost out in the crowd so barely anyone would be able to hear them. “Derek told me he's going to go to UCSD with me.” 

Scott's reaction is predictable – he holds his arms out wide in celebration, grins, and punches Stiles in the shoulder. “Wow!” He says, and Stiles can only nod. “That's _fucking_ great!” 

Stiles nods, again. 

“You guys can stay together without having to do the long distance thing!” 

Another nod.

“You can even room together so you don't have to deal with shitty roommates!” 

Again, a nod. 

Scott finally picks up on the lackluster energy, and puts his arms down into his lap with a _flop_. “You do not seem happy about this,” he assesses. 

It's fair to wonder whether or not, if he and Derek had never broken up, Stiles would necessarily be ecstatic at the prospect of going to the same college as Derek. Thinking back on it, his former happy self who had a boyfriend and whose entire life was going fairly well, he tries to channel that energy back to him and imagine himself in this exact position, just as _that_ Stiles instead of _this_ one. He had badgered Derek for a couple of days after Derek got his acceptance letter after all, giving him points as to why it would be cool and fun and awesome if they went to the same school. 

Stiles never thought about what would happen if they broke up. Not even just before then, but _during then_ , as well. Now, he's got that information of how it feels to have to be in the same school with an ex-boyfriend right there in front of him, and it's really all he can think about. 

“You don't think it's a little weird?” Stiles asks, voice low to make sure no one behind them or hovering around them could overhear. 

Scott thinks for a moment. “Well...”

“I mean, one second he's going to UCLA and then out of nowhere he just changes his mind, last second, to the school I'm going to.” 

Blinking, Scott hems and haws. “Maybe he really started thinking about what going somewhere you won't be would be like.” 

Stiles finally takes his gloves off all the way, tossing them down into the bag he has waiting by his feet. He sniffs, purses his lips, and doesn't know what to think about that. It would be stupid for Derek to base his entire college decision on where Stiles will or won't be going, and he doesn't think Derek would ever do something like that. Especially not now.

The problem is, he really can't think of any other reason why Derek would do this, pretty much out of the clear blue sky. 

“What are you worried about?” Scott asks, somehow managing to read Stiles' face like he's reading a book. “Are you worried you two will wind up not staying together?”

Stiles gives him a look. “It's a thought that's crossed my mind.” 

“No way,” Scott assures him, shaking his head. “You and Derek will never break up. That just doesn't make any sense.” 

“Nobody stays with their high school sweetheart, Scott. _Nobody_.” 

Scott frowns, maybe thinking about Allison, and then he quickly shakes it off. “Some people do. Everyone who says shit like that is just a pessimist – people stay together more often than you think they do. It's just not a very sexy story to tell, I guess.” 

Right. Two gay kids from Northern California meet in high school and spend the rest of their lives together really isn't that great of a story. As for the story they're really having, fake prom and fake relationship and fake god damn everything – well, that one might be just a little bit more interesting. 

By the time the band is coming out onto the field, blowing their tubas and twirling flags and banging on those gigantic drums, Stiles and Scott are still sitting on the lacrosse bench watching the procession with moderate to little interest. Scott only showed up this time for moral support for Stiles, most likely, and Allison might be somewhere else in the crowd for both Lydia _and_ Stiles. 

The band plays for a while, the cheerleaders appear, and Stiles sort of hunches down lower on the bench to fiddle with the hem on his shorts with a grim look on his face. It feels almost ironic that this moment, while the school song plays with all the swells, and the girls wave their shimmery pom-poms around and dance and everyone cheers, that Stiles realizes how deeply fucking sad and unhappy he is. How _messed up_ his entire life has gotten in the past two weeks. 

It's redundant, but he just wishes he and Derek were still together. 

The peppy girl that does the morning announcements on the television screens, Poppy or Pippa or something like that, takes residence in the center of the field where a microphone is waiting for her. The cheerleaders are all lined up on either side of her, the band hovering around awkwardly with their instruments like they have no clue what to do if they're not playing. She taps the mic once, twice, smiling all wide like a toothpaste ad, and leans in. “How's it going, Cyclones?” She asks, and Stiles inwardly groans over the sound of raucous applause. 

“As you know, senior prom is on Friday night -” there's a smattering of jeers and cheers from the bleachers, which she allows with a wide smile and some of her own clapping, “...a very important milestone for all our graduating seniors. We'll be sad to see them go, of course, which is why we have to send them off with one hell of a party, am I right?” 

Jesus Christ, Stiles thinks, listening to people stomp on the bleachers and in general go in-fucking-sane over this. This girl should be a sportscaster or something. Stiles is going to turn on his television in ten years and see her exact face leering out at him from an early morning talk show, he's sure of it. 

“One of the most important traditions we have for this _super special night_ is the crowning of our King and Queen for the year. Voting opens for juniors and seniors _tomorrow_ ,” she leans in incredibly close to the microphone, so her voice gets _very_ loud and _very_ intense for a moment, “during both lunch hours. Make sure you vote!” 

There's some more applause. Stiles wonders how many people actually wind up voting for this shit, in the long run. Last year, Stiles had voted for the most attractive pair of people and called it good, barely even knowing any of the others' names. Though with the whole Lydia vs Stiles thing, there might be more people voting this time around. 

“But how can we vote before we meet our candidates? Right? Let's bring them out!” 

Stiles palms his face, looks up to the skies for some kind of divine intervention. The drums bang, the tubas blow random notes, and then Pippa or whatever-the-hell is leaning back into the microphone. She's got a stack of index cards in her hand, neon pink, and she holds the first one out all serious and intense as though she's about to read the reaping for the fucking Hunger Games. 

“First up, it's Lydia Martin,” she pauses and lets people cheer, leaning back while Lydia marches her way across the field towards where Pippy is waiting for her. She is, indeed, done up just like Stiles had assumed she'd be – in a pretty floral dress and shoes sensible for walking in grass, hair long and shiny and flowing. “..and Jackson Whittemore.” 

Jackson appears from a pace or two behind her, smiling big, and Stiles sighs. He showered and changed after lacrosse for this big hoedown, unlike Stiles, who is very suddenly regretting his decision to bum it, but there's nothing he can do about that now. 

Jackson and Lydia line up next to Poppy, to the left of her, and then one of the cheerleaders produces a small bouquet of roses for Lydia to hold, and a plastic toy scepter for Jackson to take. It just doesn't get any lower than this. 

Stiles thinks about steak as the names of the other couple are read off, met with a bit less applause than Lydia or Jackson were. He thinks about steak, and mashed potatoes, and all the shit he's going to get out of that fifty dollar gift card when he wins this buffoonery. That's what this is all about. He's keeping his eye on the prize. 

“...last but not least,” she straightens her last index card out a few times as though she's handling money, smiles just as wide as usual, and says, “...Stiles Stilinski and Derek Hale.” 

After receiving a pat on the back from Scott, Stiles rises up from the bench and begins the walk toward center field, squinting in the sun and wiping some sweat off of his brow from practice. He sort of hears the cacophony and commotion from the bleachers in a bit of a daze, tuning most of it out as he focuses dead ahead of himself to get to his final destination. 

He turns his head right as Derek is making his way down the steps of the bleachers, and Stiles has a passing thought of _shit I didn't even check if he actually showed up in the first place_. How humiliating would it have been to stand up there by himself because Derek was too busy doing something fucking stupid like getting high in the back of Boyd's truck? Stiles is almost surprised to see Derek at all, now that he's really considered this possibility. 

But there he is. He looks like he just got out of his after school art seminar, wearing the black jeans and black shirt he always does for those classes, and the entire ensemble is covered in varying shades of paint. There's a strip of white going down his forearm, some red around his neck, and a hefty amount of light blue on the tips of his fingers. So, at least Stiles isn't the only one of them who made zero effort whatsoever to make himself presentable for the student body. 

They meet halfway, and then walk shoulder to shoulder over to where Pipey is beckoning for them to come closer. “This is humiliating,” Derek says in Stiles' ear, and Stiles snorts. 

When they're lined up with the rest, the cheerleaders approach the two of them with the flowers and the scepter, and then sort of hesitate for a moment, flicking their eyes between both of them with awkward, forced smiles and wide eyes. Stiles thinks he wouldn't know what to do in this particular situation either, so he doesn't fault them for it – instead, he just rips both the flowers and the scepter out of their hands and hoards them for himself, which everyone in the bleachers laughs at. 

Pappy claps for them some more, and then she's back in the microphone in a heartbeat, taking hold of it with one hand and pressing the other against her heart. “Now, I do have to remind you,” she starts, turning to give Stiles and Derek one _hell_ of an uncomfortable leer like she's thinking about all the gay fanfiction she's been reading lately, “this is the first year in Beacon Hills High School's history that a same-sex couple has ever been nominated for King and Queen.” 

The crowd is deafening this time, and Stiles can't help but grin, his cheeks going a little hot. He chances a glance at Derek to find him wholly placid, looking across the stands with little to no interest, and then he meets Stiles' eyes head on. Derek's lips quirk up the longer they look at one another, almost like he just can't stop himself. 

“This is just a testament to how great it is to be at this school,” Piper continues. “I'm proud to be a member of a student body that is accepting, welcoming, and forward-thinking.” 

Stiles has to work to contain his eyeroll, but he nods along, because even though it's sort of fucking cheesy and annoying, she has a point. He cradles the flowers and his stupid little toy against his chest, leans his shoulder up against Derek's, and smiles. 

Somewhere down the line, he knows that Lydia is just silently fuming. Her last chance at winning prom Queen, and she's going to get swindled by the homos. Of _course_. She's probably standing there thinking that she should've put up a whole show and gone with Allison as fake lesbians or something, all in the name of _winning_. She's like that, though, she really and truly is crazy enough to do something like that. If Allison were to ever go along with something that stupid, holy shit, Jackson would be in a dumpster somewhere in the blink of an eye. 

“We wish luck to all our nominees,” Peepa sweeps her arms toward the line of them, all benign and princessy, “and we wish safe, fun, and _killer_ proms to all our seniors!” 

The band starts up again, and Stiles sort of sags in relief at not having everyone's eyes directly on him any longer. Beside him, Derek starts meticulously peeling at the paint on his fingers, and when he catches Stiles looking, he says, “was that fun for you?” in a loud voice over the sound of the band and all the people talking around them. 

Stiles shakes his head, but he smiles. “But I got all the gifts,” he gestures to his spoils, and Derek raises his eyebrows like _nice_. Before he can think twice about it, Stiles digs into the flowers and pulls out a single red rose, offering it out to Derek like an olive branch or a white flag. 

Derek blinks at it for a moment, and then he starts to smile. He takes it gently in his fingers, and then dangles it down by his side like he doesn't know what to do with it. Certainly, Derek isn't a flowers type of man if he's not painting or drawing them, so he looks a little silly standing there like that. 

The band veers back off toward the bleachers, so the noise level lowers down to the point where people can have actual conversations instead of just yelling at one another, and that's just about when Lydia appears out of thin air, her mouth pursed like she just stuffed an entire lemon in there. Jackson lingers off to the side behind her, looking annoyed and bored in equal amounts. 

She approaches Stiles and Derek, points a finger into Stiles' face, and then Derek's, and says, “you two don't even care about any of this.” 

Stiles grins. “I care plenty.”

She points that finger right back in his face again. “You just _know_ I'm going to win valedictorian and you want to pull one last win over on me, I _know_ what you're doing, _MacKenzie_.” 

Stiles nearly has a seizure at hearing his full name spoken out loud from anyone else aside from his father for the first time since he was about eight years old – she would remember that, considering they were practically in diapers together. He shifts his eyes a bit to Derek, who's standing there smirking at the name himself, and then he focuses back in on Lydia with a bit of a blush to his cheeks. “If you know you're going to win valedictorian, then why do you even give a shit about this?” He gestures with his toy scepter out over the crowd dispersing towards the student parking lots and the busses lined up and waiting, the band, the cheerleaders, the school itself. 

Lydia smooths her dress out with two hands and raises her nose into the air. “You're the only one at this school who ever gave me any competition,” she says. “I _like_ competition.” 

For a moment, the two of them stare at one another, Derek standing off to the side because he really has no part in this conversation whatsoever and Jackson doing much of the same.“You want competition?” He goads, raising his eyebrows into his hairline, and Lydia nods like _yes, of fucking course, you god damn imbecile_. Stiles sucks in a deep breath, and yells, “oh my god!”

The people around them all turn and look at what the commotion is, and Stiles grins. 

“Did Lydia Martin just call me a _faggot_?” 

“ _What_?” Lydia shrieks, so offended and aghast she can only sputter for a second, shifting her eyes to the small group of other kids who managed to hear that – all of them giving her various looks of disbelief and moderate disgust. “I never – I would _never_ – I don't say that word.” 

Stiles knows for a solid fact Lydia would sooner chew her own wrists off than call anyone _that word_ , much less Stiles, and anyone else who knows her would say the exact same thing; but he laughs. He tosses his head back and just _cackles_ , absolutely merciless. “Just kidding,” he says, in a much lower voice, shrugging his shoulders. “That should make it a little bit harder for you to win, huh?” 

Lydia gives him this _look_ , somewhere crossed between genuine hatred and genuine admiration, and then she tosses her hair over her shoulder and walks back over to where her boyfriend is waiting for her without another word. 

Derek sidles back over to Stiles' shoulder and says, “that never stops being funny.” 

“I know,” Stiles agrees. 

They stand together on the field, watching everyone else leave and drift off, and Stiles takes a moment to just hover on the grass and stare over every bit of campus that he can see from where he's standing. He opens his mouth and says, “we're graduating in a month.” 

Derek says, “yeah.” 

Turning to meet Derek's eyes, Stiles sucks in a deep breath, and for once, dares himself to tell Derek the truth – or, at least, half of it. “I am happy that you're going to be going to the same school as me. Even if – even if we won't be together.” 

Derek nods his head, although he does also look like he can't really believe what he's hearing. 

“It'll be nice having a friend there.” 

“A friend,” Derek repeats, and Stiles can't read that tone. It's not necessarily happy. 

“Yeah, a friend,” Stiles says with finality, and Derek looks away. 

“So,” Derek starts, voice very low. “You should – I have all those paintings back at my house,” and Stiles' heart just sinks down into his chest, because he knows exactly the paintings that Derek is talking about. “I don't know if you ever...wanted any of them?” 

There are dozens, maybe thirty or forty or so, paintings lined up in the back of Derek's closet – and that's not even including all the ones that Derek isn't currently referring to. He's got hundreds of them, dating back to when he was just learning to finger paint, stashed away, so that his entire bedroom reeks like paint and canvas. It's a giant portfolio he keeps just in case, or, as he'll tell you if you ask, _because he likes to remember_. 

And the specific memories that Derek is referring to right now are ones that Stiles would like to remember, as well. Derek's painted Stiles before, sure, though it wasn't exactly Titanic levels of sexy. Mostly, Derek only ever painted Stiles from memory, and they would all be weird to look at when Derek would get the courage to show them to him. Stiles would wonder how Derek can snapshot an exact millisecond in time, so Stiles' eyes are looking _there_ , and his hair is just _like that_ , and his collar is flipped awkwardly, and he can remember each and every detail and paint it all down. 

So there's ones of him, probably a dozen, and then there are just memories. Their favorite food truck, the clearing they were sitting in when they first kissed, the trees surrounding Stiles' house, and, most bizarrely of all, the inside of Stiles' fucking medicine cabinet. That's just sort of what Derek does. He'll paint anything, anything he has in his head, and Stiles always thought it was so romantic to have _paintings_ instead of _pictures_ , even if the subject matter was mundane. 

He loves some of those paintings. Bone deep. 

“I don't really care,” Stiles says, and starts walking off to grab his lacrosse bag still sitting underneath the bench. “You can keep them all.”

****

Derek, 3:45 PM : Am I picking you up?  
Me, 3:46 PM : we've been over this ten thousand times. . . . . I s2g  
Me, 3:46 PM : come to my house, it's where the limo is gonna come and get us  
Me, 3:47 PM : and my dad is gonna want pictures, so be ready for that

Derek half bursts into Stiles' bedroom on Friday night, five o'clock on the dot like he promised, and gives Stiles a very intense look. They stare at each other for all of three seconds, Stiles leaning back in his desk chair with a drawn out creak and Derek hovering in his doorway. It's almost like Derek is actively trying to avoid stepping _inside_ Stiles' bedroom, as though if he does some sacred seal of _broken-up_ will itself be broken. But Stiles holds his eye contact without even blinking, adjusting his tie slowly, and Derek sighs through his nose and walks inside with a single step, and then another. 

“Your father let me in,” he says, no preamble, and Stiles hacks out a laugh as he twists slowly back and forth in his chair. 

“I bet that was funny. I'm sorry I missed it.” 

“Everything is funny to you,” Derek says this like it's a warning, like if he makes one more fucking joke he's going to do something _wild_ like, for example, say _Jesus fucking Christ_ under his breath. 

“Did he refrain from the awkward throat clearing this time, at least?” Stiles asks, taking stock of Derek's ensemble – he's seen it before, of course, since he was standing right there when Derek picked it out and tried it on. But seeing it back on with the shoes and the hair done and the whole thing, when they're in this current situation, and comparing it to the situation they were in last time Stiles saw it...

It's a bit of a knife in the gut, but Stiles is getting used to the feeling. 

“No,” Derek answers plainly, shoving his hands into his pockets. “He asked me if I watch any football.” 

Stiles rolls his eyes upwards and shakes his head. Here's the thing about dads with gay sons – is that they sort of raise these kids under the presumption that they don't have to worry about much, aside from the little fucker getting a girl pregnant or something like that. It's unlikely as hell that from the time Stiles was born up through age twelve that the Sheriff ever _worried_ about Stiles' future relationships beyond accidental STI's or pregnancy. 

When Stiles came out as gay, he started to worry a little bit. And when he brought _Derek Hale_ home, all six feet and a hundred and ninety pounds of him, he _really_ started to fucking worry. Which isn't to say that he spends all his time interacting with Derek with his finger on the trigger of his handgun, but it is to say that there's a lot of shuffling of feet and throat-clearing and weird questions like _so...you got a favorite team_? 

Derek has watched probably a total of three football games in his entire lifetime, and those were likely just the mandatory viewing Thanksgiving ones. The only reason he's so large is because he has a weird obsession with running around the forest and bench pressing shit - Stiles' father _knows this_. His brain just goes down the fucking tubes the second Derek walks in the room and he has to think – _this kid runs his hands all over my kid_. Even after two years, apparently, he can't wrap his brain around the concept. 

“What time is the limo getting here?” Derek asks, hovering there just inside the doorway – like he half plans on making a great escape sometime in the near future. 

Stiles checks the time on his phone. “5:15.” 

That means that they have thirteen minutes to sit here and stare at each other or, perhaps even worse, actually have a fucking conversation. Stiles rubs his fingers along his jaw, crosses his arms over his chest, and then stares very, very hard at the blue walls of his bedroom. Derek stands there for a minute, says nothing, and then he sighs through his nose and opens his dumb, idiot mouth. 

“Can we talk?” 

Stiles lifts an eyebrow, but doesn't spare him a glance. “Do you want to fight me barely ten minutes before Scott and Allison are going to be shoved into a car with us?” 

“I didn't say _fight_ ,” Derek says. “I said _talk_. Is that suddenly off the table now just because we're not fucking?” 

Stiles' eyes bulge out of his head and he spins around in his chair, waving hysterically toward the wide open door and making the _shut the fuck up_ gesture again and again. “My _dad_!” He whisper-yells. Even if the man has to _know_ by now that Derek and Stiles have been having sex pretty regularly since the end of Sophomore year, Stiles still thinks an actual and total confirmation of this fact might _literally_ send him into a heart attack. 

“Listen,” Derek starts, and he steps farther into the room as he does, ignoring Stiles' theatrics altogether. “...I feel like a lot of things have just kind of gone unsaid. I think that just breaking up like that...” 

Stiles waits for him to finish that sentence, but Derek spends a solid four seconds of dead air just moving his hands around over silent words. Stiles looks somewhere off to the side, as if there's someone waiting there he can make meaningful and mocking eye contact with. 

“I just sort of _did it_ ,” Derek says, and then scrambles to correct it. “I mean I thought about it, but then I also didn't. If that makes any sense.” 

“It absolutely doesn't, and I hate this conversation, and I would like to end it ASAP. I've heard all your reasons and excuses for why you did that and I'm just, fucking done with hearing it,” Stiles stands up from his chair and pats his pockets, making sure he has his phone and his wallet. “Like, okay, you wanted to break up. The fact that you keep _draggginggg ittt outtt_ is literally murdering my insides. Just – shut it. Let's just do this.” 

Derek has his hands back in his pockets and he scans his eyes over Stiles' face for a moment, similar to the way he looks at things he wants to commit to canvas. Tracing over the tiny details anyone else would miss, collecting it all and filing it away to use later at his convenience. His eyes flick off to the side when Stiles tries to meet them, and he manages to look right over to the corner of the room where Stiles' bed sits. 

He lifts his eyes and spots the painting that Stiles still has up on his ceiling, and he looks at it for far longer than Stiles is comfortable with. He looks at it like he's wondering why Stiles would still have that up, like he thought that it would be ripped up and set on fire by now. When he turns to look at Stiles again, Stiles blurts, “I've been meaning to take it down.” 

Derek, like his friend Boyd, has an uncanny ability to laser eye his way into people's skulls. And that's what he does for what feels like seconds on end, the gears twisting and turning in his head as he considers all the _actual_ possibilities for why Stiles hasn't taken that thing down yet. It glows in the fucking dark after all, it's not like Stiles has simply forgotten it's there or been ignoring it.

He's been _staring_ at it. Derek can figure that one out for himself no matter what Stiles tries to say about it. Derek opens his mouth like he's going to say something, something fucking terrible Stiles is positive, but luckily for the both of them, his father's voice comes from down the stairs announcing the arrival of the limo.

Stiles doesn't look at Derek as he pushes past him into the hallway. His cheeks are red like he's been caught in a lie, and he doesn't know what to do about it. He can only hope that Derek doesn't try to bring that shit up again at any point during this night, because he doesn't have any excuses.

He left it up because he wanted to look at it. There's no way his pride will ever let him admit that to his ex-boyfriend. 

Just this last night, Stiles thinks as he moves down the stairs and Derek follows him. Just this one last night, and then there's a surety that Derek and he won't speak to one another anymore. Not for months. Stiles _needs_ months, if he's ever going to be able to deal with Derek at school in the Fall. Closure has to happen before anything new can be reopened between the two of them, but it isn't like Derek has been making that very easy. 

“Okay,” Stiles' dad starts, fingers gently cradling the digital camera that only comes out for occasions just such as this – so whenever he gets his hands on it, he treats it like it's fine China. “So just – one of you – okay.” 

In his head, he must be thinking about all the prom pictures he's seen in his lifetime, or like the ones that he had taken with his own high school girlfriend. There are specific _poses_ that boys and girls do for parents on prom night, and now his father is standing there stuttering as he tries to figure out how to work around that. 

“Okay, Derek,” Stiles says, turning around to put his hands on Derek's shoulders and gently maneuver him so he's at an angle, “you be _the girl_ , and I'll -”

“Stiles, _shut up_ ,” his dad snaps, and Stiles snickers while Derek smirks. The whole _playing the gay card_ thing stopped working on his dad around Stiles' fifteenth birthday, so Stiles really can't get away with it in this household anymore, even when it's just a joke. “Just stand side by side and put your arms around each other.” 

They do as directed, Derek's arm snaking around Stiles' waist until his fingers rest on his hip, just like Derek's done a hundred million times before in the past two years. Stiles drapes his arm across Derek's shoulders and crooks it, so his hand dangles over Derek's chest. There's gotta be a thousand pictures of them posed exactly like this, so it doesn't feel awkward or forced to do it now, even with everything else going on. 

Outside, a car _honks_ long and loud, right as the flash goes over Stiles and Derek's faces. 

“All right, we're going,” Stiles says, unfurling himself from Derek's side and gently touching his fingers to his hair to make sure the gel is still keeping it all in place where he wants it. “I'll be home – I don't know -”

“Before midnight,” his dad says, and Stiles frowns. No fucking way is he going to be home before midnight, no _way_ , and his dad knows that good and well. Prom goes until eleven, but the after-party at Jackson's will go until the last person throws up in his pool and passes out in the grass. Stiles wants to be that person. 

There's a brief staring contest, and then his dad sighs and says, “One.” 

“One _thirty_.” 

Knowing that arguing the point is futile, his dad stays quiet and just sighs again as Stiles pulls open the front door and ushers Derek through it with a bit too much force. “No drinking!” He yells at top volume after Derek and Stiles' retreating backs clomping down the steps toward where the idiotic limo is sitting there waiting for them. 

In a perfect display of irony, the second Derek and Stiles are seated and the car is moving from the driveway, Scott hands them both a flute of champagne that he must have asked the twenty-two year old he works with at the vet's clinic to buy for him. 

Derek downs his in one gulp, which really should have been Stiles' very first fucking clue that this night was going to go to absolute smithereens, and then rips the bottle out of the ice bucket to pour himself another. Which was clue number fucking two. 

“You two look nice,” Allison says, and sure enough, she's in the dark purple glittering number that Scott had described in all their many conversations leading up to this exact night. It looks nice on her, especially with her hair swept out of her face and curled. She looks effortlessly elegant the way only Allison really can. Scott, meanwhile, looks like Willy fucking Wonka in that purple tie and Stiles can't help but grin at the sight of it. 

“Thanks,” Stiles says, glancing sidelong at Derek. He's halfway through his second glass, sitting next to Stiles on the bench directly opposite Allison and Scott, and he just sort of looks like he always does, except in a tuxedo instead of his usual ragamuffin attire. He's got that look on his face, the half-mad, a quarter annoyed, and a quarter I-don't-care thing he's perfected down to a science. Stiles always thought that Derek's disposition was oddly attractive, how Derek acts like he could give a fuck about anything and how Derek can be so laid back all the time and just let shit happen without it really getting to him. 

Because Stiles cares about nearly everything, obsesses, and can't calm down for even ten seconds if he really tried. He always thought they were complementary in that respect, but again, Stiles guesses Derek never really saw it that way. 

“Food first?” Stiles asks, turning away from Derek to look back at Scott and Allison. 

“Food first,” Scott agrees, gesturing to the alcohol in his hand. “I don't want to fucking puke on this suit – it'll cost an arm and a leg to get it cleaned.” 

“And I've always liked your arms and legs,” Stiles quips, and Derek reaches for the champagne bottle again. Clue fucking three. 

They go through the drive-thru at their favorite shitty fast food place, and then park on the side of the fountain in the center of town. Every single one of them, Allison especially, covers themselves lap to neck in spread out napkins over their clothes, so when globs of ketchup or mustard or melted cheese come dripping out of their burgers there's something to catch it before it ruins all their rented single-parent family threads. 

Once all the food is gone, they climb out in their ridiculous clothes and ask their driver to take a picture of them in front of the fountain, right as the sun is starting to set the sky into purples and pinks to go with Allison's dress. Again, Derek puts his hand on Stiles' hip and Stiles crooks his arm around Derek's neck, while Allison's dress blows in the wind and glitters and Scott has that stupid bottle of champagne in the hand that's hanging over Stiles' shoulder. 

The driver takes several pictures with all four of their phones, and actually takes it pretty fucking seriously, considering this isn't even in his job description. He crouches down and angles it so the light is just right, like this is his night job and he spends the rest of his time as a photographer – which is likely. 

As it's happening, Stiles has the passing thought that these might have had the potential to be his favorite pictures ever taken of himself and his friends. This is exactly why prom ever mattered to him to begin with, for shit just like this – those memories and those pictures and the future occurrences of looking at them whenever something shitty happens to make himself feel better. 

He has another passing thought that he may never be able to look at them for longer than a few seconds, because all it will ever do is remind him of all this bullshit with he and Derek. These are break-up pictures, hurtful and painful reminders, and it makes Stiles so angry that Derek had to fucking ruin this for him. There's nothing he can do about it, so he poses and smiles and has to force himself to not immediately go in and delete them once the driver hands him his phone back. He'd regret that, he thinks. 

Scott collects all the garbage from the food into the big white paper bag it had come in, and moves like he's going to toss all of it into the nearby trash before they head off for _phase two_. Stiles doesn't think anything of it at first, and then he quickly doubletakes and reaches his hand out to grab Scott's arm, saying, “whoa, wait a second.” 

Scott is puzzled for a moment, and frankly so is Stiles, but then his face flickers with realization and he half laughs. “Oh, right. The collection,” he finger guns, and opens up the bag of trash to fish out one of the burger wrappers that has the label of the restaurant stamped all across it. 

Right, Stiles thinks. The collection. Derek and Stiles have been collecting one burger wrapper a trip from that place since their third date, because another one of Derek's little projects is hoarding these things like some kind of weirdo. What he plans on doing with them, Stiles isn't sure, but he knows that right now they're all piled up in the bottom drawer of his desk, reeking like fast food and probably drawing ants to the site. 

Stiles hesitates when Scott holds the wrapper out for him, because he had only stopped him from throwing it out as a knee jerk reaction from having done the same hundreds of time before. Now, there's really no reason for him to keep these. Hell, Derek might have already thrown that shit out because all it really was was a reminder of Derek and Stiles' relationship. 

But, Derek takes it out of Scott's hand and folds it up carefully, before fitting it into his wallet without a single word. Stiles thinks about asking him about that, but he's not _nearly_ had enough to drink for that conversation, so he shrugs it off and climbs inside without making a comment. 

Scott has ready made Jell-O shots waiting for them in the fridge, so they tell their driver to take the car aimlessly around the mountain a few times while they sit on the floor in the middle of the car and take the shots one by one. Scott had remembered everyone's favorite “color” of Jell-O, so Allison has three purples, and Stiles three reds, Derek three yellows, and himself another three reds. It's gitchy and stupid, but it gets them drunk enough to the point where the pre-game has effectively done its job. Derek does all of his in record fucking time, so Stiles is still laughing about something Scott said with his second while Derek dumps all three of his empty cups into the small trash bin. 

“You're really going at it, dude,” Scott comments, with no malice or judgment in his tone. Just an observation, because by now, it's getting hard not to notice. 

“You should probably pace it,” Stiles suggests, and Derek looks at him with one eyebrow raised. “Like, at this rate you'll be slobbering drunk on stage when we win King and Queen.” 

“ _When_ we win,” Derek smiles at him, just south of mocking. 

“Yes, _when_ ,” Stiles repeats. 

“What are you and that confidence going to do if we lose?” 

“We'll never know.” 

Derek smiles at him, and he sweeps his eyes up and down Stiles' face, from lips to eyes again and again, the way he used to do right before he'd lean in for a kiss. Stiles stares back at him for a moment, oblivious to whatever conversation Allison and Scott are having less than a foot away from them, and then quickly looks away, slamming one of his shots back and wincing from the burn as it slides down his throat. 

When the limo parks alongside the other twenty or so that are already lined up outside the venue, the nicest party hall in Beacon Hills, Scott produces these silly little plastic flasks he must've bought from the bachelorette section of the dollar store – they're zebra striped and read _TWERK JUICE_ in neon green lettering. He sets to work on meticulously pouring watermelon flavored vodka into each until they nearly spill over and then doles them out to each of them individually.

Stiles relishes in the sight of seeing something so ridiculous in Derek's hands until it vanishes inside his coat pocket. When Derek catches him looking, he smiles, which is the exact moment Stiles knows that he's drunk _enough_ , and says, “have you prepared a speech?” 

“Yeah,” Allison agrees, sipping at her own flask and wincing a little. “What wisdom are you going to bestow upon us when you accept your crown?” 

Honestly, Stiles has no fucking idea. Past winners have gone on and on about true love and loving this school and being proud to be a cyclone etcetera etcetera. And though God knows there's no better Stiles than a Stiles who has a microphone and a crowd, his mind goes blank when he thinks of what he'll say if he really does get shoved in front of a mic tonight. 

“Something about the gays,” he decides, and Scott makes a gesture like _well of course_. “I'll request that Lady Gaga plays on quiet behind me.” 

Derek rolls his eyes – not a fan – and takes a long glug of his flask before holding it out to Scott again and saying, “fill this back up, will you?” 

“Jesus,” Scott laughs, unscrewing the lid from the half-empty bottle. 

“Don't get messy,” Allison warns, and Stiles has an intrusive memory of the last time Derek _got messy_. It was at, where else, Jackson Whittemore's house, and Stiles walked into the bathroom to find Derek sleeping in the marble bath tub, the drink he was working on polishing off tipped over and spilling slowly across his chest. 

Where's he gonna pass out this time, Stiles wonders, watching as his flask is topped off again. One can only hope it won't be center fucking stage with a spotlight on them. 

The first thing that greets them after they show their tickets at the door and step into the hall is Lydia Martin. Of course. 

She's standing by the door like she's been waiting for them, arms crossed, in a long golden dress with sequins and jewels encrusted into the bodice, and more or less pounces on top of Allison the second she's in sight. “I've been here all god damn night,” she hisses, and Stiles thinks _that's what you get for opting to be on the party planning committee_. She's probably been here since school got out, hanging up the stupid little fish and the blue and green streamers – the _under the sea_ theme the graduating class voted on and picked.

Stiles had done a write-in ballot for _Hunger Games_ , which Derek thought was hilarious. But no one listened to him, and now here they are, among the hanging toy sea horses and crabs that the taller kids have to keep ducking under as they maneuver their way through the room. 

“Where's Jackson?” Allison asks, and Lydia narrows her eyes at her. 

“And you've been drinking,” she accuses, and how she knows that when Allison is barely even acting drunk at all is beyond Stiles. “God. I wanna be _drunk_.” 

Allison pulls her flask out from her clutch purse and waves it around, before Lydia grabs her wrist and ducks the thing into the folds of the skirt of her dress. The two of them wander off, Scott trailing behind because it isn't like he has anywhere else to go, leaving Derek and Stiles alone. Stiles points one finger toward the snack table, and Derek shrugs his shoulders. 

They walk across the floor as the lights flash and a Top 40 song blares over their heads. Some people greet them, offer insistences that _of course they'll win_ and _I voted for you_ , and Stiles smiles at them all out of requirement and Derek just follows along behind him. Derek's been doing that pretty much since the day they first met – just following Stiles' lead. 

Stiles scoops himself some on-theme blue punch and then surreptitiously dunks a shot's worth of vodka in on top of it, stashing the flask back in his pocket before anyone notices. Derek grabs a handful of mini hot dogs and shovels them into his mouth all at once, and then washes it down with vodka straight. Stiles sighs, and he doesn't know what he's meant to do now.

The song is still a boppy one, and Stiles can't fucking dance to save his life and neither can Derek, so that's off the table. There's a table of some of Stiles' friends over by the stage, so they could go over there, but then Stiles doesn't really want to talk to them very much. And Derek's friends wouldn't be caught dead here to begin with, rites of passage be damned. 

So, for the moment, they're stuck floating. There's probably only fifteen or so minutes until the winners for King and Queen are announced, and then they get to leave for Jackson's after-party, where Derek's friends _will_ be, so it's possible that these moments are the last they'll have to spend alone with one another. 

Derek brushes his shoulder against Stiles', so Stiles turns to look him in the face. “You've had a lot to drink already,” Stiles accuses, and Derek shrugs. 

“Not too much, yet,” he insists. It must be true, since his words come out very precise and crisp, not a slur anywhere in sight. “Besides, did you really think I'd do this night without alcohol?” 

Stiles frowns and looks down into his cup. Then he looks back up and meets Derek's eyes, having just enough alcohol in his system to be even more frank than he already is. “Do you really hate me now?” 

Derek frowns right back at him, brow furrowing in the center. “What?” 

“I said -”

“I heard you. Why would you think that I _hated_ you?” 

Looking around himself, he leans in and lowers his voice, his lips right next to Derek's ear so no one else can hear over the music. “Maybe because you fucking broke up with me.” 

Derek pulls away so that he can look Stiles right in his face, that same look of perplexed indignance in the crease of his brow. “I specifically remember saying that I still loved you -”

“Are we going to argue here?” Stiles asks, gesturing around themselves, at all the lights and the glittering fish and the people. “I'm not drunk enough for that.” 

“I've never hated you,” Derek snaps, heedless to whether or not anyone can hear them. “I don't have to _argue with you_ about that, it's just true.” 

There are a million things Stiles could say back to that. But at this point it's just starting to feel like they keep going around and around in circles, either because Stiles won't be honest or because Derek won't be honest, or maybe the both of them. It's getting less and less clear with every single day that passes. It's funny, they've known each other intimately for two years, but standing here right now, Stiles would say that there are entire parts of Derek that he never had any idea about. 

Then again, you can never really know anyone. Stiles and Derek could go on to know each other for another four years, and by the time those four years are up, Derek will be a brand new person. New skin that's never touched Stiles the same way that he used to. 

Fuck, Stiles thinks, taking another long drink. Maybe drinking tonight was a bad idea after all. “Let's try and have fun,” he shouts above the music, not directly looking into Derek's face. “It's the last night, right?” 

Derek looks at him like that's just about the worst thing that Stiles could've possibly said, but Stiles just shrugs. Whatever, man. What the fuck ever. Enough with the bullshit. He's getting drunk. He sips until his cup is empty, and then takes a cupcake with an amusing frosting whale on top captive, unpeeling it and licking the frosting off of his fingers. 

“So,” he starts, angling his body to face Derek head on, “did you ever finish some of those paintings you have in your closet?” 

The unfinished works of Derek Hale – a true sight to behold. Stiles has never quite understood it, especially not with painting or drawing, how an artist can just _not finish_ something. One that stands out in particular to Stiles is this big one, maybe the height of an average doorway and the width of an average bookshelf, that Derek has in the darkest corner of that walk in closet of his. It's supposed to be of a forest from a distance, off to the side, so the open field next to it is wide and yellow-green – but halfway through the trees, Derek had stopped. There's a flock of birds rising up from the foliage, but Derek's only ever outlined them, never gotten all the paint work in. 

Stiles has just never understood that. Derek clearly has the entire painting finished in his mind, so why doesn't he just finish it? Maybe Stiles doesn't know enough about being truly creative to ever understand it, no matter how many times Derek has tried to explain it. 

“Everything that was unfinished before is still unfinished,” Derek tells him, looking at Stiles with that same crease still in-between his eyebrows. “Some of that shit, I'll just never finish.” 

“Why?” Stiles asks around a mouthful of cupcake. 

“ _Why_?” He says it like he doesn't understand the word anymore.

“Yeah. Finish what you started.” 

Derek blinks at him. Stiles doesn't think he's said anything that profound, but from the way Derek's looking at him, you'd think he just did spoken word. “Some stuff isn't that easy,” he says in a measured tone of voice, and Stiles snorts. 

He shovels another lump of cupcake into his mouth and looks up at the twinkle lights hanging above their heads, wrapped around fishing nets so they cast diamond shadows across the dance floor. “The best stuff never is.” 

Pappy takes center stage, in spite of only being a Junior – maybe she's here with her senior boyfriend, whoever the hell that is. She's in a long green dress with her hair in big curls, her eyes sparkling with yellow glitter as she leans down into the microphone and the music quiets down, down, down, until it stops completely and everyone on the dance floor pauses, turning to face her with either unmitigated delight or unmitigated annoyance. 

“This is it,” Stiles nudges Derek in the arm, turning to look at him – though, he's withdrawn, now. He has his flask out wide in the open, holding it in two fingers, like he doesn't care if anyone sees, or maybe he just forgot he had it in his hand. “Stop looking so fucking constipated – we're about to be _on stage_.” 

Derek makes a face, takes a sip, and then just shakes his head. He's going to fucking puke up there, Stiles thinks bitterly, and rolls his eyes. 

“How's everyone's night going?” Pippy half-yells into the microphone – she must have her own flask – and the crowd cheers in response. “Great, cool, awesome. Well, it's nearly that time,” she taps her wrist, smiling again. “Nine forty-five on the dot, and you know what that means!” 

There's some more clapping and hollering from the audience, and Pepper smooths her dress out with her hands, lighting up at the attention and enthusiasm. 

“That's right. It's time to announce who's been elected for King and Queen of this year's graduating class. Whoever wins tonight will be going home with the title, as well as a fifty dollar gift card to Outback Steak-”

“Fuck yeah,” Stiles nudges Derek in the side again, harder, and Derek chokes on whatever he had in his mouth, sputtering. “Not that you'll be getting any.” 

“What?” Derek demands, jaw dropping open. “I do all this, and I don't -”

“You should've thought about that,” Stiles doesn't finish the sentence, but he raises his eyebrow very meaningfully at Derek, and is met with a harsh scowl and an averted gaze for his troubles. 

“...and our nominees, for the last time. Lydia Martin and Jackson Whittemore,” applause, applause, cheering, Lydia's hand coming up above the crowd in a wave like she's in the fucking Princess Diaries, “Matthew Lawrence and Shiela Disler,” applause, applause, “and Stiles Stilinski and Derek Hale!” 

Stiles imagines this moment in his head to be like on The Office, when the camera pans and then zooms in on someone's face all tight – a hundred pairs of eyes flick to where they're standing, an invisible spot light shines on the two of them, and Stiles has fucking cupcake guts all over his hand and Derek is drinking out of the fucking twerk juice flask. He can think of absolutely nothing to do in this moment, so he just kind of holds his arms out like _yes, I exist_ , and Derek stands there underneath a plastic fish on a string with a frown on his face. 

“Well, well, well,” Pinny chortles after the noise level dies down enough for her to speak, “the juniors and seniors all voted, breaking the record actually – nearly every member of both classes took the time to put in a ballot! Can you believe that?” 

Stiles and Derek share a look. 

“So after spending an entire afternoon sorting though nearly seven hundred tiny little slips of paper,” even though there's a definite undercurrent of genuine malice in her tone, she keeps that smile on her face, bright and proud, “we have our winners! Of course, congratulations to all our nominees for even being nominated -”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Stiles intones, making a mouth out of his fingers and rolling his eyes. 

“...I've got the envelope,” she waves said blue envelope around in the air, and then makes a big show out of opening it and examining it closely, even though she's the fucking one who counted and knows damn well whose names are written on that stupid little fish shaped card. The entire room, even the people who don't give a shit, goes mute silent with baited breath as the envelope crinkles nice and loud in the microphone. She inhales a sharp breath, smiles all big, and leans back into the mic. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she says, like this is the Oscars, and Stiles for one fraction of a second feels like it _seriously might be_ , “...Stiles Stilinski and Derek Hale!” 

Stiles draws his hands in fists close to his chest, grins, and gets the familiar shoot of adrenaline he gets every single time he's ever won anything or been successful – there's something about that feeling, even when it's something stupid like this, that just gets him _going_. The crowd parts for them, everyone clapping and smiling at them both, so Stiles grabs Derek's hand, curling their fingers together without even thinking about it, and starts dragging him off towards the stairs on the side of the stage. 

Up they go, and then the lights are bright and hot on their skin, and Poppy is right there beckoning them again, while a couple members of the student council hover off to the side holding all of the spoils that are about to be bestowed on both Stiles and Derek's heads. 

The crowd is blacked out by the bright lights shining on them, so Stiles has to squint when he tries to scan across it, and he can't make out anyone's faces. He can only _imagine_ what Lydia looks like right now, arms crossed, half-drunk, lips pursed and puffed in annoyance. It's a delicious thought. What a _fucking_ night. 

There are flowers being handed to both of them, two bouquets of bright red roses, and then the crowns come out. Stiles has just a millisecond where his excitement level goes down when he sees them out of the corner of his eyes, thinking that they'll have to awkwardly decide who will have to wear the _obviously_ feminine queen crown and who will get the king crown, and then everyone will murmur about _guess we know who's the top and the bottom now_ , and it'll put a damper on the entire thing. 

But, their student body president is holding out a pillow that only has two king's crowns on it, smiling wide as she offers them out to both of them to take. Stiles grins right back at her, relieved out of his mind, and also – bizarrely – touched. It's a small gesture, meaningless and stupid really, but Stiles is drunk enough that he feels like crying about it or something stupid like that, so instead he just grabs one and puts it on top of his head. 

Derek takes his as though it's a poisonous snake, but he dons it all the same. Standing there with his plastic kid's crown, holding his flowers, he looks like a complete idiot. Stiles doesn't even care. 

“The kings of the 2016 graduating class of Beacon Hills High,” Piper says into the microphone to their left, turning around a bit to look at them and smile some more. 

From somewhere in the darkness of the crowd, a voice yells out _speeechhh_ , probably Scott, and then a dozen voices are yelling the same, until the entire room is chanting it, over and over. Stiles laughs, dizzy and tipsy and lit the fuck up, and then he looks over to meet Derek's eyes.

Derek smiles at him, and then gestures with his free hand as if to say _that's all you_. Of course it is. 

As he walks up to the microphone, he says, “thanks, Pappy,” while she slowly starts to move out of his way. 

She pauses, frowns right at him – a weird emotion to see on her face – and says, “it's Amy.” 

Stiles blinks at her, wonders where the hell he was getting all those P names from, and then just shrugs and approaches the microphone while she turns and walks across the stage. Amy is quite a bit shorter than Stiles, even in her high heels, so he has to lean down in order to talk effectively into the thing, and as soon as he does, the rest of the room goes more or less silent. 

“First of all,” he says, relishing in the way his voice echoes back at him from the speakers, “I'd like to thank the true gay icon, Katy Perry -”

There's a smattering of laughter from the kind of people who would get that joke, and Stiles leans away from the microphone to laugh himself. 

“Just kidding,” he says, and then clears his throat. “No, um – this is really cool. Thanks for being so cool and picking us to represent our class. It's fitting I think, since I'm Stiles and Derek is Derek – you know what I mean. Two completely different people.” His throat goes dry for half a second after he says that, the same exact thing that Derek had said to him when they broke up, and all of the sudden, out of nowhere, he thinks he might start crying. There's a lot of emotions going through his mind right now, starting with the fact that he's won, and people like him, and they're the first gay kids to win this, and – he and Derek aren't together anymore. Maybe that, first and foremost. 

There are over a hundred pairs of eyes staring at him, a spotlight, a bouquet of roses in his hand, a stupid fucking crown on his head, and he really thinks he might cry. This is a non-option, even if he could explain it away by being moved and touched by this whole thing – it just can't happen. 

“...a whole spectrum of the class represented. Um. We, the both of us,” he turns and gestures to Derek without fully looking at him, because for all he knows the second they lock eyes he'll just start bawling, “me and Derek, just want to say thank you. He's not much for speeches, but -” that gets a hum of laughter, and Stiles looks down at his shoes – it's going to happen, he's going to _fucking cry_ , “...we both are really proud to be standing here with people who have always...” he chokes up, so the only thing that echoes back at him this time is he sharp exhalation of breath and a sniffle. His classmates, oblivious, clap and cheer, moved by _equality_ or whatever the hell, but Stiles is about to completely choke underneath the heat of these lights on him. The cheering goes on the longer Stiles stays quiet, and the only thing he can think to do, with his eyes all flooded with tears, is to just lean into the mic and give a final, raspy, “thank you,” before turning on his heel and heading off to the side of the stage. 

Derek is standing there waiting, looking equal parts amused and vaguely concerned, and tries to catch Stiles' eyes, likely to ask if he's okay. Stiles shakes his head, waves his hand like _it's good_ , and mostly tunes out whatever it is that Amy says into the microphone that the audience cheers for. He hugs his flowers against himself, and staggers down the steps. He only knows that Derek is hot on his trail because he can hear the footsteps. 

“Hey,” Derek says once they're off stage, and the music starts up again. They're cornered off to the side, right up against one of the big speakers and a door with a glowing exit sign over the top. He tries to catch Stiles' eyes again, but Stiles just swipes under his nose with the back of his hand and sniffles. “I know you said this was important to you, but this seems -”

“We're supposed to be leaving for Jackson's,” Stiles interrupts, voice all scratchy and raw. Another tear streaks down his cheek and he wipes it away while Derek watches him with shrewd eyes. “Allison and Scott are probably waiting.” 

Derek stares. Stiles can only guess at what he sees there – has only ever been able to guess what it is that Derek sees when he looks at Stiles. Even though Derek has taken images of Stiles clean out of his head and painted them across canvasses, Stiles still has never known what Derek really _sees_. “Are you okay?” He asks, sounding dubious. 

“I'm moved,” Stiles snaps, half-laughing to really sell it. 

Of course, Derek doesn't look convinced. “If you're not up for the party, we can -”

“We have to go to the party,” Stiles insists, and Derek sighs through his nose. He looks down at his own roses, the golden toy crown on his head catching some of the glittering lights, and then he looks back up to meet Stiles' eyes. 

“I can't believe I've only seen you cry three times, and one of them was _this shit_.” 

Stiles laughs, a real one this time. It's not like there's anything else he can do, in this situation and in this moment. Allison and Scott really are waiting for them, likely hovering by the doors at the back of the room, watching as everyone else slowly trickles out and makes their way to their own cars to head over to Jackson's. 

He feels embarrassed at having lost it up on stage, but luckily, no one suspects the real reason for it. He lets he and Derek's eyes meet for the first time since being up on stage, and then he swallows and has to look away again. “Let's go,” he says, and Derek follows him when he starts toward the doors.

****

Derek and Stiles are met with three dozen kids yelling their names at top volume the second they walk into the grand foyer at Jackson's house. Everyone is either still in their prom formal wear while clutching cheap cans of beer to their chest to make a real interesting picture, or in their regular clothes because they didn't even go to prom. Stiles and Derek had stuffed their crowns and flowers into the big purse Allison brought, since their limo will be returning to its homeland now that they're at Jackson's, so they don't particularly _look like_ the Kings of the graduating class anymore in the strictest sense.

Still, everyone greets them like teen royalty, which is fitting, since they more or less are. They both get drinks dumped in their hand without being asked, patted on the back about a thousand times each as they're pushed through toward the back of the house. There's a good twenty second period of time then, as they're moving through all of these people like the most popular kids in the entire house, Derek and Stiles side by side, that Stiles thinks this night is actually turning out better than he expected it to go. 

That falls apart the moment that Derek spots Erica and Isaac dangling their legs off of the grand piano in the living room. He gives Stiles a look, maybe asking him if he wants to come along. Of course Stiles does, and of course Stiles doesn't, at the exact same time and in equal amounts. 

He spreads a smile across his face, nods like _go on_ , and turns to head out by the pool himself. They separate, and Stiles just tries not to think about it that much. 

He drinks, though he tries not to go at it too hard. There's a brief game of beer pong, which he's bad at and quits two rounds in on the grounds of trying to maintain some level of dignity, and then he winds up dumped at the patio table with Allison, Scott, a couple of random girls he thinks he's never seen before in his life, and Lydia Martin. 

Lydia sips her drink like she's mad about it, and she just might be, and limits her death glares in Stiles' direction to only one every ten minutes, which Stiles is grateful for. 

“You two seemed fine tonight,” Scott pipes up. He's not sloppy drunk, because Scott, surprisingly, has always managed to maintain himself when drinking, but he does have a tendency to just blurt shit like that out at top volume in front of an entire table of people that Stiles would rather not have knowing his personal business. “It's always hard to tell if Derek is just mad or just being Derek, though.” 

Stiles takes a long sip of his drink and prays. To anyone, anything. “It was fine,” he says cryptically, casting his eyes over the pool. One of the shitty baseball team's members is rafting around on an inflatable turtle, while an intense game of marco-polo goes on around him. 

“Like I said, you and Derek can't _break up_.” 

The words are out of his mouth, and every single person within hearing distance swivels their heads in Stiles' direction, antennas going up. Lydia sits up all the way, gaze cool, and says, “you guys are breaking up?” 

“ _What_?” Allison demands. 

“We're -” Stiles starts, shooting Scott a dirty look. He accepts it sheepishly, cheeks coloring while he buries the rest of his face into his plastic cup. “There's -”

“Are you on the outs?” Lydia presses. 

Stiles sloshes the ice in his near-empty cup around and around, staring dismally into it and frowning. He looks up and meets the eyes of everyone who appears to be hanging on his very last word – Allison, who looks worried and upset, those two random fucking girls, who stare at him with furrowed brows and confusion, and Lydia, who looks _interested_ if not entirely benign about her reasons for wanting to know. 

And he thinks, fuck it. Derek and Stiles only promised each other prom, and Stiles did say they could break up immediately after the fact – so just _fuck it_. “Maybe,” he says, and Lydia frowns. 

“ _Maybe_?” 

“What are you talking about?” Allison leans closer to him. She had changed out of her purple gown and into a sun dress, flip flops on her feet, but her hair and make up is still done, making her look particularly intense and serious in the dim lighting out by the pool. 

“I need another drink,” Stiles swishes the ice around some more and tries to stand up, but Allison grabs him by his shoulder and hauls him down until he's flat on his ass in the chair again. 

“Are you and Derek breaking _up_?” 

Stiles throws his hands in the air, nearly sending a handful of ice scattering into Scott's face. “Yes, okay? _Yes_. Me and Derek are breaking up. We're not going to be together anymore. He broke up with me.” 

Scott sort of sinks lower into his chair with a guilty frown, because he knows good and well the only reason this semi-public meltdown is happening is because he went and brought it up. Allison stares at him with some level of outright disbelief, and then Lydia palms her forehead and purses her lips, looking away. She, too, looks a little bit unhappy. 

“He broke up with you?” Allison asks, and she just sounds like she can't believe it. “That's – he did it _tonight_?” 

Stiles doesn't much feel like telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help him God, because that'll just be more humiliation on top of everything else. Admitting even to his closest friends that he begged Derek to pretend to still be with him so they could do prom is off the table, at least for tonight, so he runs his thumbs along the ridges of his cup and doesn't meet anyone's eyes. “Yup,” he says, lips popping. 

“That fucking cock,” Allison blurts, and then she starts looking all around the pool area and backyard as if she's hoping to lay eyes on Derek himself, maybe to throw her drink in his face. “To break up with you tonight. What a complete _fucker_.” 

“That's two years,” Lydia wonders out loud, her eyes sort of drifting off somewhere far away. She's tipsy enough that Stiles has half a mind to not even listen to her. “That's like, all of high school. And he just decides to break up with you out of nowhere.” 

“We had been fighting,” Stiles says cryptically, but Lydia still doesn't look quite convinced. 

“I can't believe him. I cannot believe him. I can't _believe_ ,” Allison goes on, shaking her head again and again. Derek should be thanking his lucky stars that he's not within her reach right at this moment, because god only knows what she'd do to him if he were. 

“Look,” Stiles starts, and when he stands up this time, no one tries to stop him. “This conversation is a fucking bummer. I'm trying to get drunk,” the ice rattles in his cup some more, “and you guys are bringing me down. I'm just – I'm going to get blackout drunk, as is the prom protocol. So.” 

His friends all blink up at him, and then just sort of concede the point. He's just been broken up with, after all. So he has every right to go absolutely apeshit at this party if he fucking wants to. 

“Just don't mix it too much,” Allison calls at his retreating back, even though Stiles has already had such a cacophony of different types of alcohol tonight it's a wonder he's not already passed out. He knows that they're all going to sit at that table and hem and haw and shake their heads about the demise of Stiles and Derek, and Stiles just doesn't want to fucking hear it. He's gone over all that shit enough in his own head. 

Inside the house, Stiles makes himself a cran-vodka and then leans up against the kitchen counter. He nibbles on the corner of his cup, takes a sip, and pinches the bridge of his nose. Now that he's told his friends about it, he doesn't have any room to deny it or hide it anymore. 

He and Derek are over. There's not much else to say about that. 

Maybe it was a mistake to drunkenly admit to all of his just as drunk friends that Derek had done it _tonight_ , even though it's not entirely the whole truth, but fuck it. It was gonna come out some way or another, and frankly, the sooner the fucking better. Stiles is getting tired of dragging the horse around, and prom's done, and now he can take that stupid painting off of his ceiling and just move on. 

He won't, but it's nice to think that one day he might. 

About a half an hour and a second drink later, Stiles is still in the kitchen, sitting on the counter and trading conversations with anyone who comes in to make themselves a new drink. He's drunk, but he's also been fisting handfuls of puffed cheetos into his mouth and taking the occasional sip of water out from the faucet, so he thinks he'll be okay, ultimately. 

He takes a big sip, knowing that if he has just one more drink he'll be crossing a line into fuckdom, and when he pulls the cup away from his face, who does he find fucking standing there? In a bright green t-shirt, dark skinny jeans, and that stupid _fucking_ way he's always doing his hair - it's Freddie fuckin' Burns, and the second he and Stiles make eye contact, Freddie freezes like a deer caught in headlights.

This. Fucking. Guy. 

“Hey,” Stiles says, hopping off the counter with a _slam_ of his feet on the floor. Freddie looks at him, shifts his eyes around to note they're the only two standing in the kitchen at the moment, and then – swear to God – makes a move like he's going to run for his life.

He turns on his heel and takes one step to bolt toward the swinging door leading out into the hallway, but Stiles is faster, and manages to grab him by his upper arm to haul him bodily back in his direction, pinning him up against the counter. The kid probably weighs about ninety-eight pounds wet and spends all his time drawing anime or whatever-the-fuck, so it's not much of a fair fight. 

“Calm down,” Stiles slurs, and Freddie looks up at him with his brow creased like _seriously_? 

“What's your problem?” Freddie demands, voice squeaking on the last syllable. 

“I don't have one,” Stiles warns him, voice low – even though he very clearly does. More than one, as a matter of fact. Several fucking problems. Maybe Derek was right. He should fucking major in psych and figure his own shit out. Freddie leans back against the counter to get as far away from Stiles as physically possible, as though he thinks that'll help anything. “How are you even at this party? Aren't you twelve years old?” 

“I'm a _junior_ ,” he's indignant, but there is a definite flash of fear in his eyes. He really thinks Stiles is about to punch him clean in the face or something. A lot of things Stiles might be, but a genuine and true _bully_ just isn't one of them. 

Stiles eases up just a little bit, making space between them, but still standing in between Freddie and the exit so he can't make any great escapes. “Listen, we need to have a conversation.” What that conversation is going to be, Stiles has no idea. All he knows is that, for some fucking reason, this kid is the scourge of his very existence, a plight on his life, even if he couldn't provide any real reasons for believing this if prompted, and he's _drunk_ so who knows what's about to come out of his mouth. 

Freddie sort of shifts his body, one leg out from Stiles' reach, and then tries to maneuver past him again. 

Stiles huffs out a laugh, taking Freddie by his thin shoulders and leading him back up against the counter. “Oh, I'm not going to _hit_ you, or do anything to you, I just wanted to -” truthfully, Stiles still doesn't know. A good guess has it at yelling at him about nothing whatsoever. 

Either way, before he gets to finish the sentence either in his head or out loud, the door to the kitchen opens with a creak, so the both of them turn and squint at whoever's standing there. 

It's Derek. He has an empty cup in his hand, his jacket off and tie undone, and he looks, to put it incredibly gentle, like a fucking mess. He scans his eyes across the scene in front of him, narrows them, and says, “what the hell?” 

Stiles looks down at Freddie, who looks right back up at him. There's nothing really that shocking happening, but then Stiles has Freddie boxed up against the counter, their hips almost touching, and they're facing one another, _pretty close_. Stiles thinks it looks a little odd, and tilts his head to the side as he considers that. 

Freddie, on the other hand, blurts, “nothing.” 

Which is hands down the most suspicious fucking thing he could have ever said, especially since Derek didn't even ask a direct question. Stiles groans, backing away from Freddie effectively and turning to face Derek head on. “What's _up_?” He demands, none too kind. 

Derek looks between Freddie and Stiles, again and again, and then meets Stiles' eyes a bit blearily. “What the _fuck_ ,” he pauses, either for dramatic effect or he's so drunk he can't even finish sentences completely, “are you two doing?” 

Stiles and Freddie glance at one another, and Freddie looks particularly petrified. “Nothing?” Stiles repeats Freddie's line from earlier, and Derek takes a step forward. 

“Are you _seriously_ hooking up with Freddie fucking Burns -”

“ _What_?” Stiles and Freddie shout at the same time, but Derek keeps talking. 

“...after you and I -”

“Uh, what _you and I_?” Stiles snorts, half a laugh coming out of his throat. Derek gives him this look, all bloodshot and bleary and fucked up, and that is the exact moment that Stiles realizes that Derek is shit-fucking wasted. Like, blackout. He has memories of Derek throwing back that champagne, and the Jell-O shots, and the watermelon vodka, and who the fuck knows how much he's had to drink since he set foot inside this house with its endless supply of liquor. But Stiles is banking a guess that it was _a lot_ , if the look in his eyes right now is anything to go by. Stiles sighs, and makes a gesture to Freddie like _get out of here_. There's no reason for him to caught up in the cross hairs of whatever this is about to turn out to be. 

Freddie looks between them one last time, probably confused out of his mind, and then turns and pushes out the door past Derek without looking back. “We weren't hooking up,” Stiles says in an even voice. “We were just talking.” 

Like he doesn't even know that Stiles is speaking, Derek says, “You fucking accused _me_ of wanting to touch that kid, and then I come in here -”

“Oh, my God...”

“...and you've got your hands all over him?” 

“You've got _fucking_ drunk goggles on,” Stiles snaps, shaking his head, “my hands were not _all over him_ , we barely were even looking at one another!” 

“You're doing this just to get back at me,” he accuses, and Stiles nearly passes out from the shock of it. 

“What? Oh, my God! You're so fucking – you are _so drunk_. You are losing your damn mind!” 

From somewhere behind the door, someone who must be listening in on this shouts _Stiles and Derek are fiigghtttinggg!!_ , and a gaggle of people burst into laughter. After all, it's a common enough occurrence lately, even in public, that people don't even bat an eyelash about it anymore. Stiles and Derek pay them absolutely no mind, and Derek takes a step closer to where Stiles is still leaning back against the kitchen island. 

“I can't fucking believe you,” Derek accuses, and Stiles just looks away and shakes his head. “We're _barely_ even broken up, and you're already -”

“Well, whose fault is that? Who was the one who broke up with who? If you can even fucking remember that!” 

Derek opens his mouth to say something, but Stiles just talks right over it.

“Which is just another thing – why the _fuck_ would you give a shit if I really were having sex with Freddie god damn Burns? What difference does it make to you?” 

“I don't like that,” Derek hisses, and Stiles narrows his eyes. 

“You don't have to like it. We're not _together_ anymore.” 

Derek takes a step back, rubbing his forehead again and again, maybe trying to fight through the haze of absolutely-fuck-wasted he's living in right about now. Stiles stands back and watches, wonders how many people have their ears pressed against the cracks in the door, listening and hanging onto every single word. “I shouldn't have done that,” Derek says in a low voice. Low enough that Stiles has to lean forward and say _come again?_ , and Derek shakes his head. “I shouldn't have fucking done that.” 

“Done what? Burst in here like a fucking rhino to start yelling at Freddie -”

“Broken up with you,” Derek interrupts, and Stiles closes his mouth and stares. They hold eye contact, as much as they can with Derek being completely gone to inebriation, and then Stiles has to look away. 

“What the _fuck_?” he intones. 

“I just felt like we were fighting all the time,” Derek goes on, and Stiles just keeps shaking his head in disbelief, because he just _can't...fucking...believe_..., “and that didn't seem right to me, like we didn't even get each other anymore -”

“People _fight_!” Stiles yells at him, holding his hands out. “You get to know someone too well, and you start to argue with them, it _happens_!” 

“I couldn't fucking stand it!” 

“So you ran away,” Stiles slaps his knee and breathes out an indignant huff. “So you ran off like you always _fucking_ do whenever things get bad. You didn't even try.” 

Behind the door, Stiles can certainly hear that the party is deathly quiet. There's music playing from somewhere, some hoots and hollers from out at the pool, but in the hallways and the nearby living room, there's not a sound to be heard. Oh, they're all fucking listening. Stiles can't find it in him to care at this exact moment, but even if he did, what's he supposed to do about it? 

“Well, whatever,” Derek hisses, stumbling forward a bit to dump his empty cup in the garbage. He nearly trips over his own feet, but catches himself at the last second before falling on his face. “You and Freddie will be very happy together, I'd bet -”

“Oh, _God_ ,” Stiles leans his head back and clenches his eyes shut, “just _shut up_ , I can't talk to you when you're fucking like this.” 

“You're the one who -” he hiccups, pauses. And Stiles knows that facial expression very, very well. He moves forward on instinct, just to angle him so he's facing the sink, and then he has to stand there and watch as Derek vomits with a gag and a _slap_ into the stainless steel, right on top of a pile of empty snack bowls. 

Stiles says, “yup,” and shakes his head. “Yup, that makes sense.” 

Derek vomits once more, Stiles angling his face away and scrunching his nose up, and then as soon as Derek slides himself down into a sitting position on the floor, panting, Stiles turns on the faucet and tries to get as much of it swirling down the drain as possible. 

While he's standing there, half watching and half glowering out the window, Derek's fingers fumble against Stiles' calf, his ankle, his thigh. He says, “sorry,” in a low murmur, quiet enough that Stiles almost doesn't catch it.

He doesn't know if it's for the puke, or for the break-up, but either way, he just flat out ignores it. He can't take the time to think about anything Derek had said, not right now. Switching the sink off as soon as the vomit is all but gone, he puts his hands on his hips and stares down at where Derek is hunkered down on the floor. He's fading out pretty fast, half-passed out, an unmovable heap, and Stiles has no other choice but to try and get him home. 

With a sigh, he moves to the kitchen door and pulls it open. The second he does, two dozen people, Lydia Martin included, scatter away, heading off in different directions and pretending to look busy, faking conversations and picking up random artifacts off of Jackson's furniture to study. Not a single one of them looks directly at Stiles, and Stiles huffs. Fuck them all. 

“Scott!” He yells out into the party, and within seconds, Scott is coming in from the glass doors leading to the pool with a cup in his hands. He smiles all big, so he definitely wasn't one of the fuck-offs standing there listening to Act III of Stiles and Derek's Break-Up. Without a word, Stiles moves aside and gestures to where Derek is slumped against the cabinets underneath the sink. 

Scott skids to a stop in the doorway, says, “holy shit!” and Stiles nods. “Derek is passed out!” 

“I need help getting him to the car,” Stiles explains, and Scott nods.

“What car?” 

“I'm getting one, now.” 

“You're _leaving_?” Scott looks hurt. 

“Derek is a _fucking_ disaster, Scott, so yes, yes I'm leaving right now. Just – help me get him into the car when it comes, all right?” 

Scott looks at him for a moment. It's a look that says _why is this your problem? I thought he broke up with you? I thought we hated him?_ But, all the same, he sighs, puts his cup down on the counter, and grabs one of Derek's arms while Stiles grabs the other.

****

“You absolute fucking disaster,” Stiles hisses, pulling on Derek's arm with all his might to try and get him to scoot across the tiled floors in the bathroom. Derek more or less just grunts in response, letting Stiles lean him back against the cabinets underneath the sink, tilting his head back and panting shallowly through his nose. “I've never seen someone so _fucked up_ in my life,” Stiles goes on as he squats to get a look into Derek's face.

His eyes are half closed, but he at least seems like he cognizantly knows that Stiles is there in front of him. Maybe in a _is this a dream?_ type of a way, but it's better than nothing. 

He and Scott managed to shove him into the backseat of the uber, the 20-something girl manning the vehicle watching with a frown as they did so. “He's not going to puke is he?” She demanded, sounding very no-nonsense as she smacked bubblegum between her teeth and the new Beyonce' played in the background. 

“He already did that,” Stiles assured, but she still didn't look too happy about it. Either way, she drove them back to Stiles' house, and even got out and helped drag Derek across the front lawn to the porch. After that, she swiped her hands together and shrugged like _that's as far as I go_ , and left Stiles and Derek to their own devices. 

Stiles managed to thump Derek upstairs step by step, quiet as he could possibly be, and then he was too tired to go on. He barely managed to get him inside the bathroom and up against the toilet in case there was another puking session, but now, he's at a loss. 

Frowning, Stiles tries to think of what to do with him. He absolutely cannot leave Derek Hale passed out on his bathroom floor, chief of all because his father will be waking up sometime about five in the morning to head into work. Stiles can't quite be sure what would happen if the Sheriff stumbled into the bathroom, flicked on the light for a shower, and saw Stiles' ex/fake-boyfriend sprawled out across the floor using a towel for a pillow, but he makes the probably apt assumption it would be hilarious and terrible in equal amounts. 

“I cannot physically pick you up,” he says out loud, mostly to himself because Derek is in another planet entirely, “and you cannot stay here. So you've gotta _try_ and help me walk you to my bedroom.” 

“Yeah,” Derek agrees, voice low. 

_Sure_ , Stiles thinks a little bitterly, setting his jaw and looking away. _The words 'my bedroom' you understand just fucking fine._

“And shut your mouth,” Stiles says, standing back up to his full height and putting his hands on his hips as he tries to get creative, “my dad is a trained light sleeper.” Even funnier is imagining the Sheriff coming out of his room after being woken up by a loud _thump_ if Derek fell down the stairs or something, catching Stiles trying to haul him down the hardwood floor. Stiles and his dad don't necessarily have the same type of humor. 

Stiles tries pulling Derek up by his shoulders, and Derek actually does make a valiant effort of getting up onto his feet. Then, his feet just sort of pinwheel underneath him and he _bangs_ to the floor again, this time with a light laugh. 

Stiles stands back and rubs his forehead. Okay. So, trying to get him up and on his feet is off the checklist. He glares around his bathroom for a second, taking stock of what supplies he has. There's the bath mat, which would do nothing. Body wash and shampoo, which Stiles guesses he could use to slick the hallway floors so dragging Derek to his room would be slightly easier – but then there's the whole issue of making a giant mess, the entire house reeking like Axe, and his dad slipping and falling and breaking his neck or something. Toothpaste, toothbrushes, Stiles' medication, bar soap, dirty clothes in the hamper, and...towels. 

_Towels_ , Stiles snaps his fingers and nabs a big old beach towel from the bottom of the stack above the sink, nearly sending the rest toppling over his head. He shakes it out and observes it. It's got the red Power Ranger on it looking particularly ridiculous framed by a flaming background, and it's just oversized enough that Stiles thinks he'll be able to both fit enough of Derek's body on it so he won't go slipping off and use it as a pully to drag him to his room. 

He lays it out on the floor in front of Derek's legs, Ranger side up, and then grabs at Derek's shoulders. “Come on,” he says, while Derek actively tries to fight him to the best of his ability, “onto the towel. I can't do this all night.” 

Even while Derek does his best drunk mumbling of protests and swatting at Stiles' hands, Stiles does manage to get his back onto the towel, his entire top half spread along so all Stiles can see anymore are some flames and the Power Rangers' helmet. He tugs Derek about a foot, and it's hard but still much fucking easier than just trying to carry him. His shoes scrape along the tiles at first, so Stiles has to drop the edges of the towel to come around and take them off, depositing them underneath the sink so his dad won't find them in the morning and ask questions. 

Then, Stiles spends five minutes tugging and pulling, keeping up a constant tirade in his head of _this fucking asshole, can't believe we ever god damn dated, I hate this piece of shit, absolute worse person ever in life, wish he would choke on his own vomit, death, die, hate_ , while his fingers cramp from the effort of getting Derek down the hall. 

As soon as he has Derek far enough through his doorway, Stiles closes his door as lightly as possible, and flicks on his light. In the harsh glow of it, Derek looks even more fucking ridiculous. The collar of his shirt is a mess, his tie is nearly choking him to death, his pants are all wrinkled, and he has no shoes on. It's a picture perfect image of _drunk after prom_. 

See, in Stiles' head, when he used to think about coming home after prom with Derek – this is not what he had in mind. Stiles always thought there'd be pizza and smuggled beer and kissing and pretending to watch Netflix. As it is now, Stiles just had the only senior prom he's ever going to get, faking it with his ex-boyfriend while said ex-boyfriend got smash wasted and then they got into a screaming match in Jackson Whittemore's fucking kitchen. It's shitty, and Stiles gets even madder at Derek than he was to begin with. 

“ _Fucking_ disaster,” he hisses again. It seems, however, that Derek is officially passed out. It becomes even more apparent two minutes later, while Stiles is unfurling himself from his own outfit, when Derek starts to lightly snore from his spot on the floor. Stiles rolls his eyes heavenward, grateful that he never knew about this charming facet of Derek when they were actually dating, and carefully steps one leg over Derek to flick his light off to send the room into darkness. 

After he gets into his bed, he blinks up at his ceiling and lays his hands across his chest. He thinks his whole entire senior year has gone to the fucking dogs, or the hyenas from the Lion King, and he just wishes every thing would hurry up and _end_. He's never felt that way about school before. He never thought he'd feel this way about _senior year_. This was supposed to be the best year of his entire life to date, and now – well. 

It is not quite that, to say the least. Everyone heard Derek and Stiles' fight, and he doesn't know how much they deduced from the content of what they said to one another. Most people probably think that Stiles seriously was making out with Freddie Burns, and that Derek is psycho, and that they're broken up. 

The last one, at least, is true.

****

Halfway through sophomore year, Derek and Stiles had become pretty decent friends. Being trapped in the worst class together had effectively forced them into speaking to one another, and at first both of them were pretty apathetic towards each other. As time went on, Stiles realized that Derek is interesting and cool and funny and Derek probably realized that Stiles is fun and not nearly as obnoxious as he tended to seem. They started spending time with one another outside of class, hanging out after school in the parking lot or going to the pizza place down the block during their shared lunch hour – or, on one notable occasion, crossing the lacrosse field toward the surrounding woods.

Derek had said he went for runs around the forest out there quite a bit, and knew the paths as well as the back of his hand – which he proved by winding through them expertly with Stiles at his side. Stiles said, “where does this lead?”

“You'll see,” Derek said, crunching over twigs and dead leaves. 

Right when Stiles was starting to think that Derek was just screwing with him and taking him out here around and around in circles as some kind of a joke, the trees started to part out into a clearing. They walked out into the grass, and Stiles stopped for a moment, cocking his head to the side. “Wow,” he said, looking at the view in front of him. 

“I know,” Derek said, stuffing his hands in his pockets and looking out at the mountains in front of them. 

Stiles knew that these mountains existed, because he lives here and they're visible from nearly any point in their small town, but he'd never seen them like that before. Seeming to be right there in front of him, like he could touch them, even though they must have been miles away. They looked different from this angle – Stiles could see the individual dives and grooves of them, could see all the trees as separate things instead of just blobs of green and brown. It was a really nice thing to look at, in short. 

“How'd you find this?” Stiles asked, stepping forward. He took note of the steep cliff they were hovering over and sheepishly glanced down the edge of it as far as he dared. 

“I come around here a lot. There's a lot to see.” 

“You mean, a lot to _paint_ ,” Stiles offered with a wink, and Derek had nodded, completely serious even though Stiles was partly joking. “You've painted these?” He gestured to the sight in front of them, and Derek shrugged his shoulders.

“Haven't had a good enough reason to, yet.” 

Derek had already told Stiles by then that he liked having _reasons_ to paint things, which Stiles thought was interesting and weird in equal amounts. Mostly because he didn't get it. 

Stiles plopped himself down on the grass, spreading his knees out in front of him and resting his elbows on top of them. Derek did the same, right next to him, close enough that their shoulders kept brushing up against one another. 

“What constitutes a good reason?” 

“If it makes me think about something, I guess,” Derek said, squinting in the sunlight back at the mountains. 

“So, the drawing you did of a half empty bowl of cereal in my sink,” Stiles raised one eyebrow and Derek sort of blushed and looked away, “what's _that_ make you think about?” 

Derek picked a stick up off the ground and poked at the dirt, maybe just for something to do with his hands. “It makes me think about how annoyed I get that you never finish your cereal.”

“Breakfast is _hard_ ,” Stiles said. “It's hard to eat that early! And that's not the real reason.” 

“It honestly is,” Derek shrugged, and he wasn't kidding. “It's an emotion. It doesn't have to be that deep.” 

Stiles thought about that for a moment. He figured that he has all kinds of emotions day by day, about the stupidest things even, but he can't say he ever really stops to think about them that much. Derek probably stops and thinks about them a lot – it must be where the creativity comes from. 

“You're telling me these mountains make you feel _nothing_?” Stiles gestured to them, and Derek glanced at them himself. “They're pretty fucking cool to look at. I think you should paint them.” 

There was a beat of silence, and Derek bit his lip. Which Stiles had at that point never seen him do before, and he looked so god damn serious. He looked serious all the time, but there was normal-serious, and then there was _serious_ -serious. Stiles stared at his profile right up until Derek met his eyes, and then Derek opened his mouth. 

“I think I'm gay,” Derek had blurted out, and Stiles just raised his eyebrows. That year, he was the only gay kid who was openly _out_ at Beacon Hills High, so of course, the second one would come running to him for his sensei knowledge on all things related to the topic. 

Stiles looked at him for a while, and then he said, “you wanna talk about it?” 

Derek stared back at him, that intense way he was always looking at Stiles – as though Stiles was just another one of those unfinished pieces Derek had lined up in the back of his closet – and said, “I want to kiss you about it.” 

The thing about being gay in a heteronormative world is that you start training yourself to not catch feelings for anyone who hasn't already admitted to being anything other than straight. Stiles had had a lot of passing thoughts about Derek in the past few months they'd known each other, like that he was attractive, but of course everyone already knew that. There was also a lot more – like that he was interesting and cool and funny and nice when he wanted to be, and these were things Stiles just sort of learned to say _okay_ about. He didn't let himself think about falling in love with Derek, because _Derek was straight_. 

Everyone is straight until proven otherwise. And Derek had just admitted he was otherwise. 

“That's a line,” Stiles said in a low voice, “if I've ever heard one.” 

Stiles angled his head a bit to the side and moved closer, and Derek did the same, until their eyelashes were sweeping up against each other's cheeks as they looked at each other. Waiting for one of them to pull back, change their minds, or freak out. Stiles sort of thought Derek would freak out. 

Instead, he closed the distance, and they kissed for the first time.

When Stiles wakes up in the morning, Derek is hovering over him.

It startles the ever living _shit_ out of him, enough that he shouts and smacks his head against his headboard – because Derek looks half-dead. He looks like a fucking zombie risen from the fucking earth. His skin is all pasty-white, he looks a tad sweaty, and his eyes are bloodshot to all hell, not to even mention what his hair fucking doing with a mind of its own. 

“I think,” he begins, and Stiles rubs the back of his head, “that I left my jacket at Jackson's house.”

“I would've looked for it, but fuck you,” Stiles hisses, pulling his covers all the way up to his chin and glaring. 

Derek blinks at him for a moment, and then he sighs. “Look,” and Stiles just wants to get up and run away before this shit can start, because he recognizes that fucking tone, “I didn't black anything out last night. I remember everything that I said.”

“Oh, so you remember accusing me of trying to get into spazzoid Naruto lover Freddie Burns' pants -” 

“Yes,” Derek interrupts before that can go on any father. “I remember that. Okay? I'm sorry, but I walked in and you looked like you had just been making out, what was I supposed to think?” 

Stiles rolls his eyes, and then elects to throw his covers off and sit up all the way. Derek takes a step back, hunching forward and frowning. “You don't have to think a damn thing. You don't _get_ to think about me!” 

“I get that you're pissed -”

“I've transcended!” Stiles yells, and Derek winces like the volume physically hurts him. “Pissed doesn't even _begin_! Let me break down for you, since you seem so fucking confused, all the things that you have _done to me_ in the past two weeks!”

Derek stands there and hovers like a ghoul, a miserable fucking ghoul, who's about to be delivered the most scathing beatdown of all time. Which, he more or less is. 

“Number one, you broke up with me halfway through my science project. I had to turn in the ugliest looking thing I've ever seen just because you wouldn't help me even though you promised you would!”

“I offered to stay -”

“You _broke up with me_! It's moot! That A minus is the entire reason Lydia is going to win valedictorian -”

“It's a tall claim to make that _I'm_ the reason you lost the title, Stiles.”

“Number two,” Stiles plows forward, slapping two fingers down in the middle of his palm, “you lied about it. You lied directly to my face about why you wanted to break up with me. You didn't even try to talk to me about it. We could have had a real conversation about our relationship, and instead, you just did your little disappearing act.” 

Derek palms his face, but he doesn't deny it. He just looks out Stiles' window and squints at the early morning sunlight, frowning and looking terrible in every sense of the word. 

“Number three, you made me cry in front of an entire room full of people.” But at least they still have no idea why he was really crying – and never will, as far as he knows. “Number four, you got _fuck wasted_ at Jackson's house and yelled at me for ten minutes in his kitchen, and number five, probably you made Freddie piss his pants, number six, I had to drag your ass up and down and all around last night and my _shoulder_ hurts -”

“Okay, I get it,” Derek hisses, waving his hand. “I get it. I'm – I know there's no possible way that saying sorry could really make you believe that I am, but I am. Okay? I've been fucking miserable. Does that make you feel better?” 

“Not really,” Stiles huffs, crossing his arms and looking away. “I've been just as miserable, so it's – you're just a dick. End of story. There's nothing more to be discussed.”

“You don't really think that, or mean that,” Derek points at him and says it like he's so sure, and that just makes Stiles all that much angrier. As if Derek knows Stiles well enough to know what he means, or thinks, or wants, at any given point in time! 

When Stiles must make an expression that says all that he isn't speaking out loud, Derek very emphatically looks up to the ceiling over Stiles' bed, where the painting of those mountains is still taped up for anyone to see. Stiles stares for a second, gritting his teeth, and then he leaps up on his feet on top of his bed, tottering a bit. 

“I said I was gonna take it down,” he half-shouts, reaching up and picking at the tape with his blunt fingernails, “and now I am. Since we're _broken up_.” 

“Stiles -”

“ _You_ did this!” He hollers – going full register – managing to rip the top half of the painting free so that it flops down and waves in the air for a moment. “Me and Freddie could really have a go of it! I like cartoons, too!” 

“Anime isn't a _cartoon_ ,” Derek says, and Stiles just about loses his mind. They've _had this conversation before_. Stiles ignores that comment if only for the sake of his sanity, and rips the painting all the way off, cradling it against his chest. It's about the length of his torso and the width of his shoulders, so he struggles for a moment with the canvas, but he manages to right himself without going toppling over the side of the bed. 

When Stiles opens his mouth to really let Derek have it, his bedroom door opens with a slow creak, alerting both of the boys to a new presence entering the room. And his father is standing there in the doorway, in his uniform, blinking serenely in at the scene unfolding before him. Derek in his prom clothes, disheveled and clearly hungover, Stiles standing on top of his bed with a painting clasped against his chest. What a scene it must be. 

All three of them blink at one another, and then Stiles' dad clears his throat. “Well. It's eight o'clock in the morning.” 

“Yes,” Stiles agrees, shifting his eyes nervously to where Derek is hovering. 

“And you're in a shouting match.” 

Stiles swallows, hugs the painting closer to himself as a defense mechanism. “Yeah.” 

“And I get the idea Derek slept here last night.” 

“On the floor,” Derek quickly interjects, and the Sheriff lays eye on him like he's looking at a bug he wants to squish under his thumb. 

“I thought you would be at work by now,” Stiles says, which doesn't help his case at all considering the situation. 

“I was at work. I got a call about a disturbance on the radio. At my own house.” 

Oh, Jesus. It doesn't get much lower than this. Stiles and Derek must have really been yelling at one another if their next door neighbor called in about hearing raised voices at the Sheriff's house – Jesus fucking Christ. Stiles purses his lips and looks down at his feet, sinking into the mattress and the sheets. 

“You should probably go home, Derek.” 

“Yeah,” Derek agrees, giving Stiles a bit of a side-eye. “Yeah, I'll – just – when I call, are you gonna pick up?” 

Stiles thinks about that for what little time he has to debate in his own head. Just like every other day of the last two weeks, Stiles both wants to talk to Derek and doesn't want to talk to him at all. He wants things to work out, but he's angry, and so many shitty things have happened as a result of Derek running away from his problems instead of trying to fix them, and Stiles just doesn't know what he's supposed to do about it any of it.

He clears his throat – one thing he does know is that he's petty, and in this situation, he reserves the right to be. “I doubt it.” 

Derek stares at him, and then he nods his head like he expected as much and makes his way past Stiles' dad and down the hallway without another word. The Sheriff watches him go, lips set down in a frown, and then he turns to look his son in the face. 

He observes Stiles clutching that painting for another second longer, and then he says, “I'm going to guess that you two had a fight.” 

Stiles drops the painting down on his bed, and in the sunlight, it's just a mess of yellow and green. He wonders why Derek had chosen to do it that way instead of any other way, as he has wondered time and time again. “Am I in trouble?” He asks.

By all counts, he should be. He got home at nearly three o'clock in the morning last night, _loudly_ , and then went on to get into a scream-fight with his boyfriend so bad that someone called the police on the Sheriff's house. And not to mention, Derek was clearly drinking last night. Anyone can tell just from looking at his face. 

But, his dad just frowns some more. “Not this time,” he says, cryptically, and then closes Stiles' door and leaves him alone to go back to work.

****

Derek, 5:34 PM : Did you delete my number again  
Me, 5:35 PM : working on it!  
Derek, 5:40 PM : Can we talk?  
Me, 5:43 PM : absolutely not  
Me, 5:43 PM : I'm traumatized enough by the thought of having to go to school tomorrow with a bunch of people who heard that stupid fight  
Me, 5:44 PM : I don't need you showing up to pile onto the horror  
Derek, 5:47 PM : I don't care what anybody says about all of that. Stiles, come on. We seriously need to talk. I'm not saying you have to get back together with me but again we're going to the same god damn school in the Fall so it would probably be in our best interest to talk about this  
Me, 5:49 PM : that's another source of trauma  
Derek, 5:50 PM : Jesus fucking Christ. Can you just meet me in the parking lot during lunch tomorrow??  
Me, 5:52 PM : Are thing 1 and thing 2 going to be there  
Derek, 5:54 PM : If that's Isaac and Erica then what does that make Boyd?  
Me, 5:56 PM : Horton  
Derek, 5:58 PM : Okay...aren't the Cat in the Hat and Horton Hears a Who two different universes?  
Me, 5:59 PM : I'm deleting your number again holy shit  
Me, 6:00 PM : and for the record it's all in the Dr. Seuss universe, so it's all the same shit either way, Horton and the Cat and the Grinch all live in the same fucking place  
Derek, 6:04 PM : Except that in Horton Hears a Who there are no real people aside from ant-sized creatures living in grass, and in Cat in the Hat it's meant to be set in a neighborhood with normal human children.  
Me, 6:06 PM : BLOCKED

****

At school on Monday, Stiles deals with a lot of whispering. Walking past clumps of people gathered around lockers murmuring to each other and giving him the side-eye, or people that just flat out stare at him, or Lydia, who makes eye contact with him for a fraction of a second before quickly averting her eyes and scurrying at top speed in the opposite direction. Stiles just sighs through his nose and tugs on the straps of his backpack, trying to act like it doesn't bother him at all.

Truthfully, being a target for gossip has never outright bothered Stiles that much – people are going to talk no matter what, good or bad. It just bothers him that the big secret he'd been trying to hide from everyone for two weeks is out, though not in exactly the way he had expected it to be. 

Scott is already at his locker when Stiles makes it to his own. He pulls out a peach ring, chews it very deliberately while watching Stiles go through the motions of twisting in his combination, and then takes in a deep breath as soon as he swallows. 

“So,” he draws it out nice and long, and Stiles frowns at his books. “You wanna talk?” 

“Isn't everyone else talking enough for me?” 

Scott crinkles in his locker and comes up with a handful of chocolate covered peanuts. “I'm more interested in what you have to say.” 

Pulling out his French book, Stiles closes his locker and then looks all around the hallways. There are, as a matter of fact, a handful of people just hovering in their general vicinity, including people who don't have lockers in this fucking hallway. They pretend like they're not listening in, but then, of course they are. It's the end of the year, and people are going stir crazy, so the first source of anything that's even remotely juicy is latched onto like water in a fucking drought. 

Stiles is graduating in a few weeks. All of these people can go fuck themselves. 

“I have to tell you something,” Stiles turns and faces Scott directly, and Scott perks up, picking at his chocolate peanuts like popcorn. “I'm sorry I didn't tell you to begin with, but you can't keep your mouth closed to save your life, as we observed on prom night.” 

“That's fair,” Scott agrees, averting his eyes for just a moment before meeting Stiles' again. “What's up?” 

“Remember my science project? The planets?” 

“I'm still picking glitter off of my scalp in the shower every morning, so yes, I remember.”

“Remember how you said it looked like Bigfoot made it in a cave?” 

“In a cave _blind_ ,” Scott squints his eyes as if he's remembering the minute details of the thing – how Saturn's rings came out blotchy and patchy and ugly, how Venus was just a red blob that vaguely resembled a dodgeball. 

“Well it looked like that because Derek broke up with me halfway through making it.” 

Scott pauses in his eating and stares at him for a moment, before slowly reaching down to pinch at another peanut. “Okay...”

“When I came in the next morning you started talking about prom and I -” he frowns, feeling embarrassed, “...didn't wanna have to go alone. So I asked Derek to pretend to still be with me so we could still go together and no one would know.” 

“Okay...”

“So that's what we did. We acted like we were still together even though we weren't and then Derek freaked out and got drunk and – yeah. The rest is history.” 

All of the peanuts in Scott's palm are either floating around in his mouth or already eaten entirely, so he just stands there for a moment with his brow furrowed as he thinks that all over. He doesn't seem angry about being lied to, because like Stiles said there was a good fucking reason for that, but he does look markably confused. “You really cared that much about prom?” 

“You _know_ I cared that much about prom,” Stiles hisses. “And now the whole thing – I mean – I just made everything worse. Obviously.” He gestures to a handful of sophomore year girls who are surreptitiously listening in from five or so feet away. 

“You never cared _that_ much about prom.” 

“I just said -”

“I know. I heard.” He gives Stiles a very _knowing_ look, which coming from Scott, is a little more than unbelievable. “But it wasn't really _about_ prom.” 

Stiles swallows. On some level, he guesses it really wasn't. It's possible he orchestrated this entire thing down to the last details subconsciously, pulling Derek's puppet strings and dragging them both through hell just to get to the other side in the hopes that he could change the outcome. “Maybe,” Stiles mutters, and Scott nods his head as if to say _definitely_. 

“Like I said,” Scott smiles, “you and Derek can't _break up_.” 

“We are sure as fuck broken up now.” 

Scott just doesn't look convinced about that. He makes the same face mothers make at children who insist they didn't eat any of the cookies in the cookie jar, and it pisses Stiles off at the same time that it makes him feel somewhat hopeful. 

Maybe Stiles and Derek really _can't_ break up. Or at least, not yet. College will be another test altogether. 

Stiles clutches his book to his chest and taps his fingers against the cover, getting lost in his thoughts enough that when a presence appears beside him, he doesn't even notice it until they open their mouth. 

“Hey, Stiles?” 

Oh, Stiles recognizes that nasally little voice.

He whips around and meets Freddie's eyes, glowering at the sheer audacity of it all. “Oh, for fuck's sake,” he makes a sweeping gesture down the hallway, “will you get the _hell_ out of here!” 

“Okay,” Scott steps in-between them and pushes Stiles back a couple of steps, so that he nearly bumps into the lockers behind them. Freddie looks in between them with big eyes, like he half expects to get his ass beaten at some point in the three minutes they have left before homeroom. “Let's just relax. What is it, Freddie?” 

Freddie keeps looking between them for a moment, perhaps picking which one is the good cop and which one is the bad cop, and then focuses his eyes solely on Scott. That's probably for the best. “I just wanted to – apologize.” 

Oh, great. Stiles rolls his eyes and shakes his head, because if he didn't look like the asshole before, he sure as fuck does now. “Yeah, okay,” Stiles says, making another dismissive gesture. “Everyone in school thinks that we're fucking and you come right up to me in the hallway -”

“That's not my fault,” Freddie hisses, and at Stiles' murderous look, quickly looks away again. 

“It's not his fault,” Scott says to Stiles, elbowing him hard in the gut. “Stiles accepts the apology.” 

Really, he doesn't have a choice about accepting the apology either way. Sure, everything went to shit all because of Freddie to begin with, but then maybe that's more about Freddie just winding up in the wrong place at the wrong time, over and over again. Which, true, isn't his fucking fault. It might actually be Stiles' fault for being a fucking psycho with temper issues. “Yes, sure. I accept.” 

Freddie pauses momentarily, daring to meet Stiles' eyes directly. “I also just wanted to say...” he stammers for a moment, and Scott and Stiles exchange a brief look. “...I've always really looked up to you.” 

Stiles has been out of the closet since he was twelve years old, so for more than the entirety of high school, _everyone_ has known he's gay. It's true that in a sense he's never really known what the in-the-closet experience is really like, so maybe he's been what some people would consider _lucky_ – or, bizarrely enough, brave. From the way that Freddie is looking at him right now, Stiles would bet that's exactly how this kid sees him. As the super cool and chill gay kid who doesn't care what anyone else thinks about him or has to say about him. 

Stiles has his own issues with his identity like anyone else does, but it's nice that someone thinks he's managed to overcome them all. 

Clearing his throat, Stiles reaches out and pats Freddie on the back a few times, albeit awkwardly. “Yeah. That's – yeah.” 

When Derek and Stiles graduate, Freddie will be the last gay kid left at Beacon Hills High, barring any incoming freshmen. Out of nowhere this whole conversation feels like a passing of the torch, and Stiles is weirdly _touched_ by it even though five seconds ago he was thinking about wringing this kid's neck. 

Without another word, Freddie turns on his heel and vanishes down the hall, blending in with the rest of the student body. Stiles watches him go for as long as he can, and then he stands there staring out across the hallway, feeling nostalgic and a bit melancholy. 

“You're a fucking dick,” Scott half-laughs, finally slamming his locker closed and adjusting his backpack on the shoulder. “That kid was never anything but nice to you, and you've been such a _dick_ to him lately.” 

Stiles purses his lips. “I thought he and Derek were going to get together.” 

“Derek thought _you_ and Freddie were going to get together.” Scott furrows his brow and then laughs again. “I guess that's what happens when your pool of fish is three trout big.” 

“You ever think about that?” The first bell rings as he finishes that sentence, but he and Scott stay facing each other even as other kids teem past them to disperse to their own classrooms. “How – me and Derek were the only two gay kids here when we started going out. Like do you ever think...that's the only reason we got together? Because we had no other options?” 

Scott gives him a look like he's an idiot. “No,” he insists. “That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”

****

“I looked it up,” Stiles says when Derek rounds the corner outside in the parking lot, backpack on and a styrofoam container of chicken fingers in his hands. “The kids in the Cat in the Hat are whos.”

Derek leans back up against the brick wall and slowly slides down until he's sitting on the ground, box of food in his lap. “Have you ever thought about that?” Derek asks, pulling a french fry out and holding it in between two fingers. “That Dr. Seuss called an entire race of people _whos_.” 

“I never think about that, no, holy shit,” Stiles cradles what's left of his peanut butter and jelly in his hands and gives Derek a long look. He's always got some random shit like that to say – he thinks about some of the most insane things Stiles has ever heard about in his life. To the extent that Stiles has to sometimes just stop and ask him directly if he's permafried or something. It would honestly explain nearly everything about his personality. “Look, you wanna talk?” 

Derek bites into his food and flops his head back onto the brick, sighing through his nose. “Yeah.” 

Stiles holds his sandwich in his hands, waiting for Derek to say something, but then the silence drags on and on. “Well?” 

“I just don't know what I'm supposed to say,” he mutters, poking at his food and frowning down at it like it's somehow the reason for this whole big mess. “I know I said I wanted to talk and I dragged you out here but I just don't...”

Stiles takes a bite and chews it very deliberately. It's not like he has any idea what to say, either. 

“What do you want me to say?” Derek asks him, completely and totally earnest. His eyes are big as he looks at Stiles, almost pleading. 

“How about – _I was wrong, I messed everything up, my proclivity to turn to art instead of dealing with my problems has torpedoed this relationship_.” 

“I was wrong,” Derek repeats, voice both detached and serious at the same time, “I messed everything up, and my proclivity to turn to art instead of dealing with my problems has torpedoed this relationship. Now what?” 

Stiles looks at him. There's nothing else that needs to be said about any of this – Stiles has already detailed again and again to Derek how this entire thing fucked with him and hurt him, and Derek has already apologized more than once and explained himself.

So, yeah. Now what? 

“Does my saying any of that, and meaning it, make you feel any better?” 

Stiles pulls at the last bits of his sandwich, until he's got a tiny piece of bread with more jelly on it and another tiny peace with more peanut butter on it, one in each hand. “I mean...I feel better knowing that you didn't want to break up with me just _because_ ,” he admits. “But, generally? No. I still feel like shit. Just saying you regret it doesn't take back every thing that's happened.” 

“It was a mistake,” Derek says, chicken all but forgotten in his lap. “I just thought – I thought that the feeling you have for the first year is supposed to last forever.” 

That first few months _this is all brand new and exciting and I really like him_ feeling, and then the feeling when the dust settles and routine sets in and you're comfortable with one another, and then months after that when you still talk for hours and hours, and then – the first year ends. And then what? “Things don't work like that,” Stiles rests his head against the brick wall behind them and blinks across the lacrosse field. “Just because we didn't think of each other as, like, infallible perfect dream people anymore doesn't mean everything was trash. You can't love someone all the time.” 

Derek's brow furrows, like he doesn't get it. “If you don't love someone all the time, then you probably shouldn't -”

“That is such optimistic bullshit. Which is _really_ something, coming from you. I mean, Jesus Christ, you're not going to have anyone left in your life if you get rid of them the second they annoy the ever living shit out of you.” 

Like he never thought of it that way, Derek churns that around and around inside of his head. “I guess I would've gotten rid of Erica by now if I did live like that.” 

Stiles hacks out a startled laugh, and then he nods his head. Because absolutely. On a list of Top Ten Most Annoying People, Erica would top the list every fucking time as far as Stiles is concerned. “My point is, you're going to hate me sometimes, and I'm going to hate you sometimes, and that's just how it is. It's how people are, period.” 

“Maybe,” Derek agrees, even though Stiles knows he's right and Derek knows it too, beyond any shadow of a doubt. “But I still don't know what to do. We can't just...get back together.” 

Stiles frowns. “Why not?” 

Holding his arms out, Derek says, “because this happened, and it's – changed everything.” 

He might be right about that. Everyone knows what it's like to get in a fight with someone, a friend a boyfriend a family member, and then to try and come back together after the fact only to realize that things aren't quite the same anymore. As though some things that were said and some things that were done in that limbo period between _friend_ and _enemy_ were things that changed the very nature of your relationship with them.

The worst part about it is that you don't realize it while it's happening. You only know you'll never be able to go back when you try and fail. 

“So what if it has?” 

“Well -”

“Things are never going to be the way they were when we first started going out. First of all, we're not sixteen anymore, and that alone says enough.” At sixteen, Stiles played video games all the time and had Mountain Dew breath, and Derek had only just gotten his braces off and was busy drawing and painting teeth on every visible surface (upon reflection, Stiles can't believe he ever thought this was cool or interesting – it was just fucking weird, but then so is Derek.) “I mean – relationships change. I think it's a good thing. It's like...changing _together_.” 

“You like the thought of that?” 

Derek's subject matter for his paintings stretches from the mundane, to the absurd, to the weird, to the beautiful, and Stiles used to think it was because he just wanted to paint anything and everything and couldn't get enough of it. Which might still be part of the truth. But having been through this with him, having uncovered another facet of his personality and the way he thinks, Stiles thinks he understands it a little bit better now. 

Derek paints things he doesn't want to forget about. More to the point, he paints things in the hopes that they'll always remain exactly the same as they are. As though if he can trap a moment in oil then he can keep it that way no matter what happens. He has those paintings of Stiles that range from Sophomore year up until about two months ago, and if he were to lay them all out side by side in a perfectly straight line, he'd see that the line isn't so straight after all. 

People change. Derek has to learn to live with that. 

“Yes, I do,” Stiles admits. “It makes me sad, but then I guess it also makes me excited. Like, in three weeks, everything is going to be different from how they are right now. It's sad and exciting.” 

“It scares me,” Derek admits. 

“New things, new ways of looking at things, new subject matters, different things to see,” he pauses for a moment, tracing a straight line in a puddle of dirt that sits right in between them with his finger. “You don't want to look at me and still see me as sixteen years old. You just get freaked out when you think we're drifting apart.” 

“I felt like we _were_ -”

“Maybe we were! It doesn't matter.” He wipes the dirt off his finger on his jeans and turns to look into Derek's face. “I want the summer with you.” 

Derek swallows, and Stiles is close enough that he can watch his throat bob with the motion. “Yeah? Even after everything?” 

People think of relationships as straight, even lines. Like everything always works out, and there are never any fights, never any limbo periods, never any downward or upward spikes. The reality might be that love is always a zig zag; or, at least, the kind that's worth it is. That's scary, to think that nothing ever works out perfectly like it does in the movies, not even the things that you want or deserve or need. 

At the same time, Stiles wants that. And he thinks that Derek does too, that this has been a learning experience for him. Things are different between them now, without a doubt – but that's not _bad_. It's just new. 

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “Absolutely.”


End file.
